INSITE BACKERS STEP UP FIGHT TO SAVE IT

Advocates Of Safe Injection Site Launch Campaign Pressing Ottawa To
Let It Stay Open

VANCOUVER - The last-ditch political battle to keep open Canada's only
supervised injection site is about to begin.

Friday, the International Journal of Drug Policy published articles by
scientists from around the world condemning the federal government for
interfering politically with the site's research.

On Monday, well-known West Coast criminologist Neil Boyd will hold a
media conference in Ottawa to tell national reporters about his
research into the benefits of the Vancouver site, which will see its
federal narcotics law exemption expire on June 30.

Injection-site advocates will hold a rally Tuesday in a Downtown
Eastside park featuring 1,000 white crosses to represent the people
whose overdoses never ran the risk of becoming fatal because they were
injecting at Insite instead of on the street.

On Wednesday, Vancouver street nurses will stage an "information
picket" at the office of the Vancouver Police Union, whose president
has become a vocal critic of the site.

And on Friday, B.C. Nurses Union president Debra MacPherson will hold
a media conference in front of the site to talk about its health benefits.

Along the way, people from all three of Vancouver's civic parties will
gather to make a statement of support. A B.C. Supreme Court case over
the injection site, instigated by the site's operators, the Portland
Hotel Society, will continue to play out. And there's likely to be
more.

"I'm feeling this is the do-or-die time," says Nathan Allen, the face
of the campaign called Insite for Community Safety. "We're definitely
going to ramp up the pressure this month."

Allen and the Portland Hotel Society, along with B.C. scientists,
politicians and health-care groups, are working on events, statements,
reports and whatever else it takes to convince the federal government
it will be a political disaster to shut down a site so supported by
the local establishment.

"As we get closer to the deadline, there will be heightened level of
activity," said David Hurford, a spokesman in Mayor Sam Sullivan's
office.

The site opened in 2003 with a three-year exemption from federal
narcotics laws. It has since been extended twice, for 18 months each,
by a Conservative government that has clearly indicated its
ideological discomfort with the site, which critics see as enabling
drug use.

The sense now is that the federal government has to choose to either
shut it down, give it a long-term exemption, or find some way of
getting itself out of a mess by turning it over to the provincial
government's jurisdiction. That last option would allow the Vancouver
site to remain without opening the door to injection sites in other
provinces.

Hurford said the mayor's office is trying to make sure that the
political activism is smart and strategic.

"We need to be cautious about the rhetoric and recognize that the
federal government is doing some good things with the national drug
strategy, with treatment money," said Hurford. "And then they need to
see that with this issue, there may be a danger if this decision goes
the wrong way that we may lose some of that momentum."

But that coordinated campaign doesn't sit well with
opponents.

Vancouver Police Union president Tom Stamatakis, who has emerged as
the site's most high-profile local opponent, said the public is being
misled by the "well-funded and well-organized" lobby from the pro-site
advocates.

"It seems like the proponents have the momentum and they're ruthless
in getting their message out."

That's not something the advocates are so sure of.

The Portland Hotel Society's Mark Townsend said his group is engaging
in the strategic events it is because they're the only mechanisms it
has to get its message across.

"The prime minister and the police are gigantic organizations. All we
are is a tiny non-profit. We've tried to get meetings in Ottawa but we
hear nothing. This is the only way we have to communicate with Stephen
Harper and his people so they get what people really think."