DAN RATHER DOCUMENTARY SPOTLIGHTS ADDICTION IN
DOWNTOWN EASTSIDE

Report By Acclaimed American Journalist Airs On Tuesday

VANCOUVER - A Safe Place to Shoot Up is the title of a Downtown
Eastside documentary airing this Tuesday on Dan Rather Reports, a
cable-TV news show hosted by one of the world's most respected
television journalists.

Rather, the former anchor of CBS News, notes that the 7,000 drug
injection users in Vancouver's poorest neighbourhood have a hepatitis
C infection rate that's comparable to Botswana's.

He highlights the city's harm-reduction initiatives and takes his
viewers into Insite, the nurse-supervised clinic near Main and
Hastings where addicts are encouraged to inject illegal drugs without
sharing needles, to slow the spread of deadly diseases like HIV/AIDS.

Rather, who visited the city in November and worked on the documentary
with students from the University of B.C.'s graduate school of
journalism, calls Vancouver "a city of contrast."

The city has "a landscape studded with snow-capped mountains,
multimillion-dollar condos, cradling a downtown that's home to one of
the worst urban blights in North America," the well-travelled Texan
declares in the program.

Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan is introduced as "the first quadriplegic
mayor of a major North American city."

"Nobody wants to be a drug addict," Sullivan tells
Rather.

"I have talked to many people with drug addictions, and they all want
to be healthy," says the mayor, who has confirmed that, before he was
mayor, he bought heroin for a female prostitute and bought crack for a
man and allowed the user to smoke the crack in Sullivan's van.

"They all want to be clean," the mayor says. "I tell you: I do not
want to be a quadriplegic. I would do anything to stand up, but that's
not gonna happen. That's not my life.

"So, I need help managing my disability, just like those people with
drug addictions need help managing their disability."

Rather also explores the question of whether the city's highly visible
drug problem in the Downtown Eastside will remain unchanged before the
start of the 2010 Winter Olympics, now just two years away.

Rather notes that a former Liberal federal government allowed Insite
to open in 2004, but that the current Conservative government is
threatening to close it because Conservatives believe the clinic
encourages drug use.

"So, Vancouver has its work cut out for it over the next two years as
it prepares to host the 2010 Winter Olympics, and the clock is
running," he concludes.

"But unlike host cities of the past, which have swept their derelict
residents to the edge of town, away from the limelight, Vancouver is
trying to address its urban ills with a different cure that they call
a harm-reduction approach, which allows addicts and prostitutes to
take control of their own problems."

A Safe Place To Shoot Up premieres on HDNet -- a digital cable channel
- -- Tuesday at 8 p.m.