DIRTY NEEDLES PLAGUE CITY'S CORE

Shirley Mosley clicked on her microphone, faced the city councillors
and, at a table holding stapled reports and reams of whereases,
promptly emptied the contents of a clear bag.

A syringe. A crack pipe. A small metal "cooker." A condom. A
grandmother, aged 66, on a loot-bag run through the city's publicly
funded drug dispensaries.

Then she erupted.

"I don't give a damn if it's the city, the province or the federal
government," she ended her tirade. "Just clean it up."

Get used to this. Our spring of discontent has arrived.

The city, under a provincially mandated program, gives away 300,000
needles a year to drug addicts. It is not a tidy business: they are
ending up -- by the hundreds -- in schoolyards, parks, parking lots,
city streets, lawns, grassy roadsides and alleyways.

Ms. Mosley was only the most colourful of five activists who appealed
to Ottawa's community and protective services committee yesterday. All
want better cleanup; some question the very idea that governments
should give addicts needles at all.

Natalie Tasker lives on Cooper Street. She stepped out for a jog one
day last spring and found a bloody syringe on the front lawn.

She helped organize a round-up and found 150 more in a two-block area.
"We need to make downtown livable." Another cleanup is planned for May
24.

Lisa Grinham lives in Lowertown. Since April 1, she and her husband,
Chris, have picked up 250 needles in four outings. Last year, she
estimated, saw a 10-fold increase in numbers.

"I think the downtown community," says Pamela Connolly, chairwoman of
the Dalhousie Somerset Safety Committee, borrowing the perfect phrase,
"has reached the tipping point."

Indeed. While the needle exchange program has existed since the early
1990s, the last couple of years have seen a sharp increase in the
volume of reported drug debris: 714 needles in 2005, 1,523 in 2006 and
2,029 last year.

A report from the public health department was unable to pinpoint the
precise reasons for the upswing, but the cancellation of the city's
crack pipe program is thought to be a factor.

Dr. Dona Bowers is a physician at the Somerset West Community Health
Centre who has worked with many addicts over a 20-year span.

She said drug addiction is a huge issue in Ottawa, with an HIV
infection rate that is higher than Toronto's.

"We are not Vancouver, where the drug of choice is heroin. We are
Ottawa. The drug of choice here is cocaine. People here will inject 10
to 15 times a day."

The committee passed a motion yesterday asking Ontario to chip in
$200,000 toward an enhanced pickup effort.

It would dedicate a public health inspector to the existing "Needle
Hunter" program, increase the hours of operation, add Vanier as a new
hot spot and possibly add another crew.

However, even Dr. David Salisbury, the city's outgoing medical officer
of health, did not sound terribly hopeful the funds would be
forthcoming.

Needle-exchange programs and the city's much-maligned crack-pipe
dispensary are considered "harm-reduction" initiatives intended to
reduce the spread of diseases, such as hepatitis or the AIDS virus.

Dr. Salisbury said flatly they are not treatment programs, which the
city does not have in adequate supply.

"It is not about treating drug addiction. If we continue to think that
the harm reduction is about stopping addicts, then we're setting up an
unreasonable goal."

There is plenty of evidence, he said, that needle exchange programs do
reduce the spread of infectious disease.

Nor are Ottawa police standing idly by.

On Monday, from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., the police services board has
scheduled a meeting at City Hall in council chambers to talk about
strategies to combat drugs in our neighbourhoods.

Ms. Connolly said used needles are being found in schoolyards near
Gladstone Avenue and Booth Street.

"It's just totally unacceptable to have to face this on a daily
basis," she told the committee.

Ms. Grinham, meanwhile, said the police, led by Chief Vern White, are
doing their jobs in terms of enforcement, crackdowns and drug sweeps.
It is now up to the health care sector to deal with the issue of
treatment, she added.

"I think health care has dropped the ball. These drugs are killing
them. These people are not disposable. They need treatment."

It is, indeed, a sorry state. One arm of government is handing out
needles; another is left to clean up the mess, yet another branch with
getting out the handcuffs.

The city, meanwhile, is stuck with an alarming rate of intravenous
infection and as many as 5,000 addicts.

Little wonder grandma is left shaking her bag.