SAFE CRACK KITS RESURRECTED

Drug addicts will get safer crack kits courtesy of the provincial
government come next spring.

The kits will contain a mouthpiece - a piece of plastic tubing that
fits over the end of a crack pipe and a push stick to force a screen
into the pipe.

The kits are to slow the spread of communicable diseases, said Dr.
Murray Fyfe, a medical health officer with the Vancouver Island Health
Authority.

"Mouthpieces and push sticks are what we're talking about, and these
are meant to prevent harm with the practice of smoking crack," Fyfe
said.

The new policy, which Fyfe said would be provincewide, follows a
University of Victoria study in which researchers found the hepatitis
C virus on a crack pipe used by a Toronto addict who tested positive
for the virus.

VIHA is still working out the details of how to distribute the kits,
starting April 1, the start of the health authority's new fiscal year.
Handing them out at needle exchanges is one option.

"But we're going to be consulting with communities, with local
governments about this before it is implemented on the Island," Fyfe
said.

He said VIHA has learned from the negative public reaction it got in
Nanaimo earlier this year, where residents learned public health
workers had been quietly handing out crack pipe kits.

That program started without any community consultation, drawing a
backlash from the community and city council.

Fyfe said VIHA is working on developing a new communications strategy
that would iron out some past grievances

"It's a process that's underway," he said. "It really just started
this fall and we expect over time this will become an effective way to
communicate."

Public consultation on how best to distribute crack kits would likely
start in January, he said.