POLL FINDS ONLY 25% WOULD SHUT DOWN INSITE

60 Per Cent Of Respondents Say They Support Supervised Injection
Site

METRO VANCOUVER - Only a quarter of people in the region support
shutting down the city's precedent-setting supervised-injection site,
according to a poll done this week by Angus Reid Strategies.

The poll of 400 residents showed that about a third of people overall
oppose its operations, 10 per cent aren't sure and almost 60 per cent
support the site, which is the only one of its kind in North America.

But only 26 per cent support shutting it completely, while 39 per cent
say it should be able to operate indefinitely. Another 21 per cent
said it should get a six-month extension.

Those results are fairly even across the region, although women are
slightly more supportive than men and city residents more than the
region as a whole. People 55 and over are slightly more likely to say
it should be shut down.

For Liz Evans, the nurse who is a co-director of the non-profit that
has run the injection site since 2003, the results are not surprising.

"Every time I go out and talk to groups of people of all kinds --
church groups, high school students, businesses -- the public seems to
be very well educated and sincerely interested in what the best
solutions are. I find most people want to help and they're looking for
answers."

But Chuck Doucette, a former RCMP officer who is now a vice-president
with the Drug Prevention Network of Canada, said public opinion is
swayed by all the biased media coverage.

"It refuses to print our side of the story. If people actually got to
read the major independent reports that have been written, it would be
different," he said. "Those reports have all agreed the site is not
meeting the expectations of the trial when it was set up."

Angus Reid spokesman Mario Canseco, however, said that it's very
unusual to see such consistent and strong support for what has been a
controversial issue.

"The support is high in all the age and gender demographics, which is
something we find only rarely."

The Angus Reid poll more or less matches a poll conducted last June by
the Mustel Group, which found that two-thirds of people throughout
B.C. didn't want the site shut down. That poll also found that even
half of Conservative party supporters wanted it to stay open, while 41
per cent of them wanted it closed.

Canseco said the poll results tell him that the Tories' current vocal
opposition to the site is not going to help them win votes in cities.

"This might play well with their base. It is certainly not going to
help them in urban areas," he said. That is an ongoing problem with
them. In 2006, the Tories were shut out of ridings in the big urban
areas.

The poll was done Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, just before a
landmark B.C. Supreme Court ruling came out saying that Canada's
current drug laws on possession and trafficking are unconstitutional
with respect to the injection site.

Judge Ian Pitfield gave the federal government a year to rewrite the
laws in a way that will allow addicts, who he said are clearly
suffering from an illness, to get health care through the injection
site without having to get a special exemption from the drug laws.

Until now, that exemption is what has given Insite the ability to
operate legally. The Liberal government gave the first three-year
exemption in 2003 and the new Conservative government reluctantly gave
an extension to June 30 of this year.

After the Supreme Court decision came out, Health Minister Tony
Clement announced Thursday that the Conservative government would be
appealing it. As well, he and other Conservative MPs made some of
their strongest and most direct criticisms to date of the injection
site during the week, saying that it doesn't help people get off drugs
and that the scientific research on the effects of the site is "mixed."

The Vancouver injection site was inspired by similar sites in Europe,
which were started in large part as a way to get users out of public
parks and streets. In Vancouver, advocates were more interested in the
health benefits of the site, saying that it would help reduce HIV and
hepatitis C infections -- then at epidemic levels in the Downtown
Eastside -- and prevent overdose deaths.

The poll surveyed 400 adult residents of the Lower Mainland on May 27
and 28, with a margin of error of 4.9 percentage points.