CANADA'S SAFE-INJECTION SITES VIOLATE DRUG TREATIES: UN

UNITED NATIONS - The United Nations drug control agency will warn
Health Minister Tony Clement that Canada is flouting international
drug control treaties by enabling illicit drug use at a
"safe-injection" site in Vancouver or through drug-paraphernalia
giveaways elsewhere.

Mr. Clement will be urged to shut down the initiatives, which the
agency says effectively condone 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.

"Traffickers are searching for markets, and a (safe-injection site)
serves as a small market where people go and legally inject drugs."

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.

Other countries facing board criticism for operating safe-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 then-Liberal government
had approved the establishment of the Vancouver facility, called
Insite, and billed it 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 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 has been more wary,
deferring a decision on whether to extend Insite's Health Canada
"exemption" until next December.