WHAT UN REALLY SAID ABOUT SAFE INJECTION SITE

As someone who has been running a relatively small non-profit society
in the Downtown Eastside community for 16 years, I find it
demoralizing and absurd to hear we are under attack by the United
Nations. ("Canada's street drug giveaways violate global treaties:
UN," March 2.)

Thankfully, this is not the case.

InSite, which is a critical part of a life-saving strategy to end
addiction in our community, has become the target of the
International Narcotics Control Board, which, through its annual
report, created the false impression that InSite is responsible for
contravening UN treaties, convention, and efforts to control illicit drugs.

In fact, the opposite it true. The UN itself crafted a legal opinion
submitted to the INCB stating that injection sites like InSite are
not against international law. A decision prepared by the UN Office
of Drugs and Crime recognized that it is "not the intent of a (safe
injection site) to aid, abet or facilitate the possession of drugs."

"On the contrary," the decision reads, "it seems clear that in such
cases the intention of governments is to provide healthier conditions
for IV drug abusers, thereby reducing their risk of infection with
grave transmittable diseases and, at least in some cases, reaching
out to them with counselling and other therapeutic options." The
decision concludes that supervised injection sites "fall far from the
intent of committing an offence as foreseen in the 1988 Convention."

Last fall, a report commissioned by the Joint UN Program on HIV/AIDS
praised Canada's innovation in regard to stopping an AIDS epidemic
through the establishment of InSite, and even called on countries in
Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa to, at the least, start offering
clean needle programs, which are proven to reduce HIV/AIDS (although
also not supported by the INCB).

Further, Canada's Stephen Lewis, former UN envoy on HIV/AIDS, helped
release a report this month critical of the INCB's role in
facilitating the global AIDS pandemic.

The report noted that "none of the board's 13 members has formal
training in international law, despite the importance of such
credentials in interpreting treaty provisions."

"Despite the centrality of drug use to HIV transmission, none of the
board members has published in peer-reviewed journals on HIV/AIDS,
and few list any experience of HIV treatment or prevention in their
biographies," the report added.

Our experience in Vancouver confirms the UN's own legal and
public-health analysis regarding supervised injection. Since InSite
opened in 2003, numerous research papers published in peer-reviewed
journals have concluded that the site has not been shown to increase
the use of illegal narcotics or the number of injection drug users.

Most notably, scientific data illustrates clearly that the site has
actually reduced the market for controlled substances, demonstrating
that people visiting InSite are twice as likely to access detox and
addiction treatment, (Attendance at Supervised Injecting Facilities
and Use of Detoxification Services. New England Journal of Medicine, 2006).

As someone trained as a nurse in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, I
have witnessed first-hand the trauma caused by addiction.

Prior to InSite opening, Vancouver reached crisis proportions as a
result of drugs, experiencing a rampant spread of HIV/AIDS and more
than one drug overdose death every day.

The "drug market" that is of concern to the INCB unfortunately
already existed in Vancouver, long before the notion of harm
reduction was even conceived.

Canadians should rest assured our positive direction addressing drug
addiction does not contravene international treaties signed to
control the trade of illicit narcotics. Indeed, as confirmed by most
UN authorities, Vancouver's safe injection site is proving to be part
of the solution.

Liz Evans is a nurse and the executive director of the PHS Community
Services Society, the non-profit organization that operates InSite in
collaboration with the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority.