INJECTION SITE SAVING LIVES, SAYS OFFICIAL

Three Other Cities Have Expressed Interest in Vancouver's Groundbreaking
Health Program

VANCOUVER - In its first year of operation, Vancouver's pioneering
safe injection site has saved lives, cleaned up the streets, brought
hundreds of marginalized people back into the health system, and
raised awareness of the plight of addicts, all without destroying the
neighbourhood, say advocates of the project.

"It's a good start," said Donald MacPherson, the city's drug policy
coordinator who helped advocate North America's first safe injection
site at Hastings and Main in the Downtown Eastside. "We've definitely
saved lives."

"The site has exceeded expectations. Medical experts and users say
that the site is making a difference," said Jean Kavanagh, spokeswoman
for Keeping the Door Open, a coalition of addicts, health workers,
community groups and others. "It's keeping people alive and stopping
the spread of HIV and other diseases."

Today marks the completion of the first year of the three-year pilot
project, the first in North America to follow the lead of sites in
Australia and Europe.

Health authorities aren't expected to release findings about the
success or failure of the site until Thursday.

MacPherson said anecdotal evidence suggests the site is a success. He
said that nurses, who supervise about 600 injections a day, have
reported no deaths, and have intervened to stop "a significant number
of overdoses."

"It's a very popular place. The use of the service reached close to
capacity much quicker than we thought it would," he said.

"We hear from police and nurses that there are fewer injections going
on in the back alleys. The open drug scene at Hastings and Main
doesn't exist anymore in the form that it had existed."

He said hundreds of politicians, bureaucrats, health professionals and
others have toured the site. "It's a powerful educational tool for
people to understand the plight of addicts."

Officials from the cities of Victoria, Toronto and Montreal have
expressed interested in adopting Vancouver's policy, he said.

But he said Vancouver still needs more efforts aimed at prevention,
housing and treatment, especially for youth, women and mothers. "Just
opening one injection site isn't enough," he said, adding that the
city would like one or two more sites.

But not everyone welcomes the site. The International Narcotics
Control Board criticized it for allowing people to "inject drugs
acquired on the illicit market with impunity" and suggested Canada is
violating international drug treaties it signed.

Other critics complain about the number of junkies around Downtown
Eastside businesses, and costs to taxpayers.

The site received a grant of $1.5 million from Ottawa and $3.2 million
from the provincial government. It required a legal exemption and
police have agreed not to challenge users within a 10-block radius of
the facility.

Langley-Abbotsford Conservative MP Randy White said in June he doesn't
even like the term "safe injection site."

"It's really an oxymoron. Injection sites are not safe. You're
allowing people to inject drugs into themselves so let's not call it
that," he said.

White said Canada needs a national drug strategy focused on prevention
and treatment before introducing harm-reduction measures such as
injection sites. "I would rather spend my time and money and effort
. getting people off of drugs, not maintaining them on drugs," he
said.

The site made international headlines two years ago, when American
drug czar John Walters said it would be a waste of resources better
spent on prevention and treatment. But Walters conceded at that time
that the site would at least save people from death by overdose.

MacPherson said it's better to "at least have an ethic of trying
things" than doing nothing at all. "Many of the fears of the community
that it would lead to massive disorder have not come to fruition," he
said.