WHAT NEIGHBOURHOOD IN TORONTO WOULD WANT A SAFE-INJECTION SITE A LA
VANCOUVER'S EAST SIDE FOR DRUG USERS? UM, NO TAKERS?

By MARK BONOKOSKI

When the cops in 51 Division recently pulled the trigger on a
six-week undercover operation nicknamed Project Revival -- targeting
the rough-edged and crime-ridden Dundas St. E. corridor -- they
rounded up almost 300 drug dealers, prostitutes and hardcore panhandlers.

There were crackheads and dope smokers galore, but no heroin junkies
of any note were caught up in the sweep.

If intravenous drug use happens, it obviously is not centralized in a
part of the city that is already well known for its concentration of
hostels, social service agencies, roominghouses, substance-abuse
clinics, and the drop-in centres providing free crack pipes and hype
kits as preventative tools in the fight against HIV and AIDS.

But, at the end of the day, this core-city patch of Toronto between
Church-and-Parliament and Gerrard-and-Queen is no equivalent to
Vancouver's notorious East Side, where intravenous drug use is a public blight.

Odds are, therefore, that there will be no safe-injection site
necessary for years to come, or perhaps ever.

Still, rumours persist at the street level, and in the anxieties of
residents' groups, that safe-injection sites such as the sole one in
Canada -- on Vancouver's East Side -- is just around the socialized corner.

"But it's not," said Susan Shepherd, manager of the Toronto Drug
Strategy Secretariat. "Toronto has a different drug profile than
downtown Vancouver.

"The drug culture here is more decentralized. There is no 'one place'
where (intravenous drug users) come."

So distant is the possibility of safe-injection sites in Toronto --
Shepherd prefers to call them "supervised consumption sites" -- that
the required feasibility study has not even been put on any prioritized agenda.

"That's a long way down the road," she said. "But you have to ask the
question at some point: 'Does Toronto need it, does Toronto want it,
and should Toronto have it?'"

The supervised safe-injection site in Vancouver is a hot-button
issue, so much so that federal Health Minister Tony Clement struck an
expert panel two years ago to study its impact and success on health
and public order issues.

The Vancouver site -- called InSite, and a pilot project still
dependent on Health Canada's legal approval -- opened its doors in
2003, offering clean needles to combat the spread of HIV, medical
supervision to oversee the injection of illegal narcotics, and
addiction counselling.

Earlier this month, it saw its one-millionth injection.

The interpretation of statistics varies with the torque, of course,
as well as the direction that torque is applied.

The expert panel commissioned by Tony Clement concluded Vancouver's
InSite reduced crime in an already crime-plagued area, even if it was
only marginally.

But, depending on the twist, it also unwittingly supported the Field
of Dreams notion that, "build it, and they will come."

And therein lies the rub. What neighbourhood in Toronto would want a
supervised safe-injection site on one of its streets? The answer,
quite likely, is none -- especially since, according to Shepherd, it
would also include being a safe "inhalation site" for users of crack cocaine.

But history would also suggest, however, that the most likely of
neighbourhoods chosen for such a site would invariably be in the same
area of 51 Division already glutted with crack addicts and negative
attractants, as well as drop-in centres for the aforementioned free
needles and crack pipes.

According to a report by a special House of Commons committee on the
non-medical use of drugs, there are some 10,000 to 15,000 injection
drug users spread out across Toronto, which is equal to the
more-concentrated junkie population in Vancouver.

Tony Clement's expert panel on the Vancouver project reached
consensus on a number of conclusions which, depending on the spin,
are open to interpretation.

The Vancouver site, for example, costs $3 million a year to operate,
or $14 per user visit. The average junkie is 38 years old, and has
been injecting for 15 years. Injection users must inject an average
of six times a day for heroin, and four times a day for cocaine.

$35GS HABIT

As a sidebar, the panel noted that in order to sustain a $35,000 drug
habit through property crime, rather than through drug dealing or
prostitution, a junkie must steal the equivalent of $350,000 a year.

Some 85% of Vancouver's InSite attendees have hepatitis C, and 17%
have HIV. Of the clientele, 80% have done jail time, 20% are
homeless, and 38% are involved in the sex trade.

While InSite promotes getting off narcotics, only 3% were actually
referred to long-term abstinence programs.

And, perhaps most telling of all, almost a third of the visitors to
Vancouver's InSite facility, according to the study, did not live in
the East Side.

In other words, they saw it built, and they came.