INJECTION SITE NEARS CAPACITY WITH 450 VISITS A DAY

Less than seven weeks after North America's first legal supervised
injection site opened its doors, the site's operators say they're
surprised by its early popularity.

On average, the site's nurses are supervising about 450 drug
injections per day and, since the site opened Sept. 21, they have
intervened in 25 drug overdoses.

"If those people [who overdosed] had been on the street or in a hotel,
obviously, some of them would be dead," said Mark Townsend, of the
Portland Hotel Society, which runs the site in cooperation with the
Vancouver Coastal Health Authority.

Of the 25 people who have overdosed at the site, Townsend said at
least 25 per cent of them -- or six people -- would have died had they
not been fixing under a nurse's watch.

In 2002, 49 people died of drug overdoses in Vancouver.

Before the site opened, there was a fear that addicts would be scared
away by the surveillance cameras and institutional atmosphere of the
space.

The site's operators predicted it would take about six months for drug
users to become comfortable with the staff and the concept, but the
service has proven so successful, Townsend said, some users are having
to wait to use one of the 12 fixing booths.

On its busiest day, Oct. 29, the site had 525 visits.

There is no official capacity at the site, but both Townsend and
Viviana Zanocco, spokeswoman for the Vancouver Coastal Health
Authority, said 600 visits would be about as many as could be
accommodated in the site's 18-hour day.

Many people use the site more than once a day, making it difficult to
determine the average number of individuals walking through the door
each day, but Zanocco said on a recent day when there were 414
injections, 244 different people used the site.

Townsend said there is no concrete count of injection drug users in
the Downtown Eastside, but said there are likely about 4,000. If that
count is accurate, about five to 10 per cent of the users in the area
are frequenting the safe injection site.

The site is a three-year pilot project being funded by Health Canada
and the provincial health ministry. It is expected to cost
approximately $2 million per year to run.

In addition to preventing overdose deaths and providing clean needles,
the site is intended to be a contact point where users can meet with
health professionals and counsellors.

Since it opened, the site's counsellors have referred at least 33
people to detox, Townsend said.

Not all of those people have been able to get a bed in a detox
facility immediately, but Zanocco said there are plenty of success
stories that show the site is working as intended.

"We have some amazing stories that are coming out of [the site],"
Zanocco said.

She tells one about a husband and wife who recently visited a
counsellor at the site and said they wanted to get clean so they could
regain custody of their daughter, who is currently in foster care.

"We managed to get them into detox on the same day," Zanocco
said.

Zanocco tells another story about a 17- or 18-year-old boy who visited
the site to inject and ended up speaking with one of the counsellors.
Zanocco isn't sure exactly what they spoke about, but he said the boy
returned home to his mother, who wrote an e-mail to the counsellor to
say her son was trying to get clean.

"A lot of it is just talking and listening," she said.

Nurses at the site are there to oversee the injections, but are also
available to educate users on safer ways to inject.

Many of the women who come into the site are what Zanocco calls
"jugular injectors," meaning they have someone else inject the needle
into their neck.

The site doesn't allow a second person to inject a user, so the nurses
often show these women other, safer places they can inject.

"It really is good, because a lot of women, when they're injected by
somebody else, are second on the needle, so they're getting infected
with whatever the first person has," Zanocco said.

Some of the users who are especially grateful for the supervised site,
the detox referrals and the counselling have been bringing workers
treats such as pie and iced tea, Zanocco said.

Charles Parker, president of VANDU (Vancouver Area Network of Drug
Users) and the B.C. Association of Methadone Users, said he and his
members are also surprised by the early success of the site.

"We didn't expect this quick of a response," Parker said. "This is
lives we're saving."

But Parker said more sites need to be created to target other areas
and other demographics.

He pointed to the young women and transvestites who are sex trade
workers working on streets east of the Downtown Eastside, closer to
Commercial Drive.

Those people are not using the site at 139 East Hastings because they
don't want to walk 15 minutes to get a fix, Parker said.

"It's too far for them to come and so we've got to get these sites out
into the areas where [the users] are," he said.

"If you put them in the right spot they'll really work."

Parker would like to see three or four sites in the downtown area
alone.