THE HOLE IN THE HEART OF VICTORIA

'There you go," says Michel Breton, peering out from under the brim of his
ball cap. His ponytail droops down as he bends over to pluck the syringe
off the steps.

He's in The Hole, the stairwell behind the McPherson Playhouse on
Centennial Square. It's blanketed in other rubbish -- bloody tissues,
matchbooks, the little blue plastic containers that hold the distilled
water that addicts mix with their dope -- but Breton just wants the dirty
needles. They transmit the hep-C and HIV that's rampant among
injection-drug users.

Breton, a recovering addict and veteran street worker, cruises the downtown
as the volunteer head of the Society of Living Intravenous Drug-users, or
SOLID, handing out clean syringes and picking up used ones. "We exchange or
give out 300 needles a day," he says. That's in addition to what's done up
the street at the AIDS Vancouver Island needle exchange.

It's a reminder that while Vancouver may have that spanking new,
controversial, $2-million safe-injection site, Victoria has its own,
unsafe, places to shoot up.

The capital's problem may be less visible after a crackdown on downtown
drug-related crime, but it's still there, in the shadows. Local police and
politicians are among those saying there must be a better way.

Ground Zero is Centennial Square, right by City Hall, just down from the
intersection of Pandora Avenue and Douglas Street, which has retained its
Crack Corner name despite the push against pushers. Addicts use the
square's public washrooms, and no, it's not uncommon to find men in the
women's stalls.

There is talk of closing the cans, but Breton thinks that would just push
the problem somewhere else. "If you shut it down, they're just going to go
in the back alleys, and that's going to disturb the businesses."

Junkies have been chased out of the Johnson Street parkade, off the steps
of the Open Door, away from the side of Streetlink. They always end up
somewhere. These days, a secluded walkway near the Church of St. John the
Divine on Quadra Street is favoured. "Especially at night, that's a
shooting gallery."

Not that Victoria has a problem anything like that of Vancouver's Downtown
Eastside, where drug use and despair are both out in the open and
overwhelming. Authorities estimate the capital region may have 1,500 to
2,000 injection-drug users, but most aren't on the street. Breton puts the
number of hard-core, homeless needle addicts downtown at 50 to 60, max.

And even the capital's relatively genteel version of a street crisis is
less obvious than it used to be. Addicts are getting better at leaving
their needles in buckets left in strategic locations. Breton used to pick
up 60 or 70 used syringes on a single sweep. "Today, if we pick up 20, it's
a big day."

Others are out doing the same thing. After checking out Centennial Square,
Breton continued on to Amelia Street, one of the current hot spots, where
he ran across a volunteer from the nearby AIDS Vancouver Island office
doing his own "rig dig." Uniformed police reservists also scour the city
core for needles.

Then there was the crackdown that began in February, a reaction to the
clamour over the public sale and use of drugs downtown. A Victoria police
team targeted the area's most active dealers, driving them out of places
where they felt safe and picking them off, one by one. The team became
known around the cop shop as the Wolf Pack.

The result was 250 trafficking-related charges, another 70 or 80 for simple
possession, and dozens and dozens more involving break-ins, thefts, weapons
and other offences.

"When you attack drug crime, you get a halo effect," says Insp. Bill
Naughton. Drug dealers tend to be all-purpose, omnivorous criminals.

The results have been visible. When Victoria recently hosted a convention
of people who book conventions, participants noted a marked improvement in
the atmosphere of the city's core.

"My definition of success is people can go downtown without fear," says
Naughton.

But that doesn't mean the addicts have disappeared, he adds. "The footprint
is dramatically reduced, but that doesn't extrapolate to a decrease in user
numbers."

And as long as users remain, so will crime, disease and misery. Addicts
need $200 to $1,000 a day to feed their habits. That generally means
prostitution and theft. The law can jail someone for stealing, but jail
offers only a break in the cycle of addiction, not a cure, says Naughton.
"Law enforcement is just a part of the puzzle."

Breton agrees. "Nobody can tell an addict when to stop," he says. "Nobody
decided 'I'll become a junkie today. In the meantime, what are we going to
do? Put them on an island and shoot them, or try to help them?"

Public sentiment, especially among those who have just lost a bicycle or
car stereo to a thief, often seems to favour the former option.

Breton's immediate goal is to prevent the spread of disease. He wants to
see 24/7 access to clean needles, and more street workers. Right now, a
cocaine addict who shoots up every 20 minutes is likely to run out of fresh
syringes early in the morning, when the needle exchange is closed.

Long-term, Breton envisions a safe-injection site tied to some of the
existing agencies, a place that offers health care, food, vitamins,
somewhere to turn for help. Harm reduction is the philosophy. "Let's give
them a safe place where they can go without being pushed away."

To some, that may sound like the twin crimes of coddling and enabling, but
Naughton says even the most hard-hearted should see the economic benefit of
keeping users healthy. "The addict population puts a tremendous load on the
health-care system at the back end," he says. The Health Ministry estimates
it costs $1 million to care for a hepatitis C sufferer from diagnosis to death.

If nothing else, giving addicts a place to go would keep them out of the
public toilets and parkades. "That's why we were tolerated on Dowler
Street," says Breton. Dowler is where SOLID briefly ran a drop-in centre.
Despite good intentions, it deteriorated into just another place for people
to gather and do drugs, so had to shut down. "Basically, all we were was an
illegal injection site."

Breton wants to see more than that. So does Victoria Police Chief Paul
Battershill, who says: "I'm not particularly supportive of just a room to
shoot up in." Addicts also need access to health care, food, programs that
offer them a door out when they're ready to change their lives. "There has
been a good level of compassionate dialogue about the issue," says Battershill.

Victoria-Hillside MLA Sheila Orr is on the same page: "I am a very big
proponent of safe-injection sites."

She recently toured the Vancouver facility, which she referred to as the
"mother ship" of such clinics. Addicts enter what looks like a small
emergency ward, where they must scrub up at a surgical sink before
injecting their own drugs under the gaze of nurses who provide them with
clean needles.

They're monitored until it's clear that they haven't overdosed or had a bad
reaction. It's a big operation, with 10 injection stations.

Victoria will never need something on that scale, Orr says. For one thing,
we've learned the lesson of Vancouver, where the police took a hands-off
attitude and the neighbourhood went down the toilet. That ain't going to
happen in the City of Gardens, she says.

"But we live in an urban centre," adds Orr. "We'll always have a problem."

Orr would like to see a mini-site in Victoria, staffed by a nurse, attached
to one of the social agencies. We already have methadone clinics in
drugstores, she notes. But where to build such a site? You can hear the
groans downtown. Trouble already congregates around the social agencies
that act as magnets to the city's dispossessed.

"I just know that there's going to be a huge NIMBY issue," says Orr.
"Everybody's going to fight to not have that in their neighbourhood."

You don't want to build it in a residential area. Certainly AIDS Vancouver
Island's neighbours wouldn't stand for it, she says. But it would have to
be close to where the people buy their drugs.

Breton, Naughton, Battershill and Orr all speak with the compassion of
those who deal with addicts on a human level. "There but for the grace of
God go our children," says Orr. The policemen both speak of the "misery" of
users, many of whom come from abusive backgrounds.

Breton urges that addiction be treated as a disease. "Instead of talking
about the decriminalization of marijuana, let's start talking about the
decriminalization of addiction." Bust a junkie if he breaks into a car, but
don't seize his needles or nail him for possession. "As long as people
don't do any crime, leave them alone," he says.

But how is a user supposed to get his drugs without crime? Arresting
dealers and keeping addicts free of needle-borne disease doesn't change the
economic equation. It isn't as though a safe-injection site would dispense
free dope.

No, but it could make you and I safer by ensuring that people who take bad
drugs aren't on the street when they go snaky, says Orr.

And bad drugs abound now that methamphetamines have joined cocaine atop the
hit parade in Victoria. "It's bathtub dope. You never know what's in it,"
says Breton. "You see people tweaking all over town." The cocaine and
heroin on the streets today are being cut with crystal meth, he says.

Naughton is unnerved by the swift and frightening rise in the popularity of
methamphetamines, particularly among the younger "skater demographic."

Offering a cheap, long-lasting, intense high, it also turns users into
human car wrecks with alarming speed.

Heroin addicts can stay relatively healthy for quite a while. With cocaine,
the decline is more rapid. But even coke pales beside meth. "It's like
somebody's got their hand on the fast-forward button and can't take it
off," says Naughton. "What you see with crystal meth is incredibly fast,
vicious physical deterioration."

Mental decay, too. "The psychosis comes way faster than it used to," says
Breton.

Where, he asks, are the users supposed to go?