NEED WILL GIVE RISE TO DRUG-USE SITES: LOWE

Rogue supervised-injection sites will start up if the federal
government doesn't allow Victoria to go forward with its own site,
predicts Mayor Alan Lowe.

Lowe said the sites will emerge on their own, without approval,
"because there is a need."

The mayor was in Ottawa recently to discuss Victoria issues with
federal counterparts.

He said he was discouraged to learn that the federal drug policy is
now under the minister of justice, not the health minister.

"That's telling me that they are going more to enforcement, not harm
reduction," Lowe said yesterday.

He hasn't given up on the city having a safe-injection service.

"We know that harm reduction works," Lowe said, adding that he hopes
that federal politicians will come around to that way of thinking.

"[Harm reduction] wasn't in my line of thinking when I started in
this business," he said.

UVic's Centre for Addictions Research of B.C. is working on a study
proposal that could lead to supervised drug-use services in Victoria.
The idea has support from Lowe, police chief Paul Battershill and
local public-health officials. But the first step is getting approval
from Health Canada for a study that would require an exemption from
federal drug laws.

If approved, it would be the second such service in North America but
likely different from Vancouver's clinic-style facility.

Vancouver's Insite is considered a success by many but it's on
tenuous operating grounds, as Health Canada is delaying its exemption
from federal drug laws.