OTTAWA MUM ON INJECTION SITE'S FUTURE

Supporters of Vancouver's Insite supervised injection site were left
guessing about its future Thursday while the federal government kept
its silence on the facility, which will close in less than two weeks
if it doesn't get federal backing.

Closing the site would send as many as 800 drug addicts a day back to
the streets to inject heroin and cocaine, increasing the chances of
overdose deaths and of spreading HIV/AIDS though shared needles.

Support for the site in downtown Vancouver appears solid, with
everyone from Downtown Eastside groups to City Hall, the regional
health authority and the provincial government saying it should stay open

As many as 15 studies, many of them published in medical journals,
show Insite is helping reduce deaths and infection and steering more
addicts into treatment programs.

A poll commissioned by Insite backers published Thursday found more
than 70 per cent of Greater Vancouver residents aware of the issue
thought Insite should stay open if scientific evidence confirms it is
beneficial.

Also Thursday, the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users said it plans
to go to court to try and get an injunction to prevent the government
from closing the site.

Mark Townsend, of the Portland Hotel Society, one of the groups that
operate the site, said he thinks Health Canada and Prime Minister
Stephen Harper's office may be struggling with the issue. Harper
said, in last year's federal election campaign, a Tory government
would "not use taxpayers' money to fund drug use."

But Health Canada officials are thought to be convinced the site
should stay open.

"I know that Health Canada are recommending that this continue, and I
believe the minister of health thinks this should continue," Townsend said.

"What's blocking it and the reason it has been left so late is that
the prime minister's office and his staff are uncomfortable with it.
That's kind of depressing."

Clouding the issue further were published reports Health Minister
Tony Clement met with Swedish government officials last week to
consider adopting Sweden's conservative drug policies.

Erik Waddell, a spokesman for Clement, confirmed he was in Sweden,
but said his trip was "not specifically" connected with the Insite
issue. He said Clement would announce a decision before the Sept. 12 deadline.

Sweden's policy is based on three "pillars" -- prevention of drug
abuse, treatment and rehabilitation, and enforcement to reduce the
availability of drugs.

Simon Fraser University criminologist Neil Boyd said Sweden is "very
much out of step with the rest of Europe in terms of drug policy.
They have tended to look at the issue of drugs not from the public
health perspective, but from the perspective of a criminal law
problem of moral-ity," Boyd said.

That's consistent with the views of Harper, who pointedly stayed away
from a recent international AIDS conference in Toronto, he added.

Boyd said the weight of "educated opinion" is on the side of the safe
injection site and support for the site in B.C. cuts across political lines.

But he said it wouldn't surprise him if the federal government shuts
the site, "even though it's very much against the wishes of the majority."

The Insite project was endorsed again Thursday by the Vancouver
Coastal Health Authority and the B.C. Nurses' Union.

Injection-Site Studies

These are some of the results of studies of Insite published in
medical journals and elsewhere, collected by the B.C. Centre for
Excellence in HIV/AIDS:

- - Insite is leading to a marked increase in the uptake of
detoxification and treatment programs.

New England Journal of Medicine

- - Insite has not led to an increase in drug-related crime. Arrests
for drug trafficking, assaults and robbery were similar before and
after the site opened, and rates of vehicle break-ins declined.

Substance Abuse Treatment, Prevention, and Policy (online medical journal)

- - Insite has reduced the number of people injecting in public and the
amount of injection-related litter in the Downtown Eastside.

Canadian Medical Association Journal

- - Insite attracts the highest-risk drug users, those most likely to
be vulnerable to HIV infection and overdose, and who were
contributing to problems of public drug use and unsafe syringe disposal.

American Journal of Preventive Medicine

n Insite has reduced rates of needle-sharing; those who use the site
were 70 per cent less likely to report that they had shared needles.

The Lancet

- - Insite is not increasing relapse rates among former drug users and
is not a negative influence on those seeking to stop drug use.

British Medical Journal