SAFE INJECTION SITE BREAKS TREATIES, UN AGENCY SAYS

Federal Health Minister Will Be Urged to Shut Down Initiatives

UNITED NATIONS -- The United Nations drug control agency is expected
to warn Health Minister Tony Clement at a conference later this month
that Canada is flouting international drug control treaties by
enabling illicit drug use at a supervised injection site in Vancouver.

Clement will be urged to shut down the initiative, which the agency
says effectively condones the use of drugs that Canada has agreed in
an international forum are banned substances outside prescription.

"In a way, [Canada] is encouraging illicit trafficking," Zhu Li-Qin,
chief of the Convention Evaluation Section of the UN's International
Narcotics Control Board, said in an interview from the agency's
headquarters in Vienna, Austria.

"Traffickers are searching for markets, and a [supervised site]
serves as a small market where people go and legally inject drugs."

Officials will notify Clement of the board's findings through
established contacts at Health Canada and directly to a Canadian
delegation at the annual meeting of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs
in Vienna March 12-16.

Article Four of the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs says
countries will pass laws to make sure drugs are used only for medical
and scientific purposes.

"Generally, in international law, when you sign a treaty, you are
supposed to conform both your domestic legislation and your domestic
behaviour to the obligations you have under the treaty," said Melvyn
Levitsky, a retired U.S. ambassador on the board.

"Although we understand the compulsion behind these sites, the
convention says drugs are supposed to be used for medical or
scientific purposes -- not for getting public nuisances off the streets."

Other countries facing board criticism for operating supervised
injection sites are Australia, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands,
Norway, Spain and Switzerland.

"The board regrets that no measures have been taken to terminate the
operation of such facilities in the countries concerned," says the report.

The board noted in its 2003 report that the Canadian government, then
under the Liberals, had approved the establishment of the Vancouver
facility, called Insite, and billed as a "safe, health-focused place
where people can go to inject drugs."

In the 2006 report, released this week in Vienna and Washington, the
board expresses much greater alarm over the continued existence of
the facility, and reports of drug-enabling programs elsewhere, such
as a "crack" pipe distribution initiative in Ottawa.

"The board is seriously concerned that several cities in Canada, in
addition to the heroin injection site in Vancouver, have planned to
distribute drug paraphernalia, including 'crack' pipes, to chronic
users," the INCB report says.

Liberal leader Stephane Dion has pledged to provide funding for more
supervised injection sites, calling the Vancouver project "quite a
success," but the Conservative government deferred a decision on
whether to extend Insite's Health Canada "exemption" until next December.

"The bottom line is that we're interested in helping people to get
off drugs," said Clement spokesman Erik Waddell.

But Insite advocates fear an expected shift towards more enforcement
in treating drug abuse in the government's coming National Drug
Strategy does not bode well for the future of the facility.

"There's been no question that the Conservatives, politically, have
an agenda where they don't support Insite, they've made that pretty
clear from day one," said NDP MP Libby Davies, who added her concern
that Clement will use the INCB's position to bolster that "agenda."

Davies said the board is "out of touch" with the work that Insite is
doing in Vancouver and the Downtown Eastside, specifically.

"I feel like they are poking their noses into something they know
nothing about. Let Insite do it's job. It's working really well," she said.

Dr. Julio Montaner, head of the B.C. Centre for Excellence in
HIV/AIDS, which evaluates the scientific research done at Insite,
said no international treaties are being broken.

Montaner said Insite operates under a research exemption specifically
granted by Health Canada because of the program's scientific merit,
and not as a means to remove unwanted drug activities from the
streets as the INCB stated.

"It [is] monitored by the B.C. Centre [for Excellence in HIV/AIDS] in
order to gain insights regarding the safety and impacts this
intervention can have both in terms of the life of the individual who
is engaged in these activities and the community at large," Montaner said.

"We totally refute the notion this is in non-compliance with Article
4. This is, in fact, in full compliance," he added.

Neither Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan nor his spokesmen responded to a
request to comment.