INJECTION SITE A BOOST TO WAR ON DRUGS

MELBOURNE, Australia - Vancouver's supervised drug-injection site has
been praised at an international conference on harm reduction as a
major step in the war against drugs.

Mayor Larry Campbell said on the weekend that the site in the Downtown
Eastside is likely to begin round-the-clock operations soon.

"Once we're operating at full capacity, then we'll have to consider
opening other sites," he said at the 15th International Conference on
the Reduction of Drug-Related Harm.

"I'm absolutely confident we're saving lives. We're looking at five to
10 interventions a week, and they include cases where we've actually
called an ambulance and had people taken to hospital and treated."

The injection site on East Hastings Street is the only one in North
America and has been open seven days a week, from 10 a.m. to 4 a.m.,
since it opened last September. Campbell said it should be open all
the time.

Heather Hill of the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, which operates
the site, told the conference that 500 to 600 injections a day take
place.

Of Vancouver's estimated 12,000 injecting drug users, about 4,600 are
regarded as the "client population."

"We know we've had a huge penetration rate," she said. "About
two-thirds of the client population have signed up."

Hill agreed that the site has probably prevented deaths from overdoses
- - and some users have been diverted into treatment programs by
on-site counsellors.

"We've had a lot of positive feedback from parents and from the
individual youths themselves around the fact that we've been able to
hook them into different treatment resources," Hill said.

"I wouldn't go so far as saying we've made some people kick the habit.
But we've provided some people some respite from the street, and
opportunities to think about whether or not they want to move on with
their lives."

Alex Wodak, president of the International Harm Reduction Association,
said the injection site is important because of its potential to
influence policy in the U.S.

"Around the world the tide is shifting, very clearly and very
unmistakably, away from an approach to drug addiction based on
criminal justice and law enforcement," said Wodak, director of the
Alcohol and Drug Service at Sydney's St. Vincent's Hospital.

"Except in the U.S., the move is toward an approach based on health
and social interventions, with support from law enforcement."

The zero-tolerance approach to drugs by the U.S. has been "a
public-policy disaster," Wodak said, calling it a major contributor to
high rates of incarceration and AIDS.

"The U.S. approach is also expensive. It breeds rampant police
corruption, it's led to the development of narco-states in
Afghanistan, Colombia and in Burma, and it's provided a healthy income
stream for narco-terrorists.

"So, the more successful this alternative public health model is . . .
the more a problem it is for the U.S. to continue being such a zealous
supporter of its own failed model.

"It looks as though what Vancouver is doing is already having a
positive impact in the city itself, and hopefully it can also have an
impact in other parts of Canada, if not globally, especially in the
U.S."

Campbell's assistant, Geoff Meggs, said Campbell "went to Australia as
a guest of the conference. He was put up in a hotel and flown at their
expense."