DRUG INJECTION SITE WORTH CLOSE LOOK

Edmonton city council should take a careful look at Vancouver's experiment
with a safe injection site for drug addicts. This city may be a good
candidate the country's second such facility.

It comes as a bit of a shock to learn the city has a sizable population of
hardcore needle users: 7,000 to 10,000, according to various estimates.
Vancouver estimates its addicts number around 15,000.

In the last 18 months, there's been a dramatic increase in the number of
drug users shooting up here in public spaces such as back alleys, parks,
corner-store washrooms and dark downtown doorways, says Marliss Taylor, a
nurse working with the inner-city needle exchange program. That's partly
due to the increasing homeless population, she says.

Taylor estimates 200 people a day would use a supervised site. Safer, clean
injections would mean addicts don't get other medical problems. Staff would
watch for overdoses, which claimed a shocking 143 lives in Alberta in 2002
(about the same as car accidents). Staff would also provide help getting
willing addicts into treatment programs.

In the long run, a safe injection site would help slow the spread of
infectious disease like HIV, says Taylor. About half of all new HIV cases
in Edmonton are connected to injection-drug abuse.

Yes, it's a controversial idea to provide addicts with facilities to
legally inject illegal substances. Why should taxpayers support a place to
carry out an illegal activity that society abhors?

Providing a safe-injection site is not putting a stamp of approval on drug
abuse. Rather, it's a pragmatic step to reduce harm to a population at risk
- -- a group that goes largely unnoticed, mostly at its own peril and but
partly also at ours. The same rationale underlies the city's
needle-exchange program, which has handed out 850,000 hypodermics a year
for more than a decade in an effort to reduce the spread of AIDS and hepatitis.

Taylor estimates her program would hand out about two million needles a
year if it was extended beyond the downtown.

Gerry Predy, chief medical officer of health, says Edmonton's drug
addictions are somewhat different from Vancouver, so the B.C. experiment
will have to be "very carefully" evaluated.

"But it's something that should be explored for Edmonton," said Predy,
adding that this city has a "significant" problem with injection drug abuse.

In Vancouver, addicts are mainly injecting opiates like heroin a few times
a day. In Edmonton, most addicts are injecting cocaine or combinations of
prescriptions drugs crushed in water. In some cases, they might inject up
to 20 times a day. Would they come to a site that often?

In Vancouver, a preliminary report says the safe-injection site is having a
positive impact.

In the first six months, 600 people used the site daily. Addicts are
healthier and staff have successfully treated 107 overdoses. There are
fewer needles littering the neighbourhood and fewer incidents of public
injection, both of which make area businesses and residents happy.

Edmonton's drug population is drawn to the city for a number of reasons.
Addiction problems are often associated with higher rates of poverty and
mental illness, and both are factors here. Also, for years the province's
only methadone clinic, a treatment center for heroin addicts, was located
in Edmonton.

A safe-injection site is not a silver bullet. There isn't one for drug
abuse, unfortunately. An injection site must be connected to other services
such as treatment centres.

The city is only beginning to tackle its drug-abuse problem. Former Mayor
Bill Smith set up the Edmonton Community Drug Strategy, which will make a
final report in September. A safe injection site should part of that strategy.

In addition, there must be a good discussion with police, social service
agencies, schools and neighbourhoods.

Most of us would rather think drug addiction problems are all in gritty
Vancouver's east side. That's not so. But Vancouver has come up with an
interesting response that might well work here.