VICTORIA TO FUND SAFE-INJECTION SITE

Health Ministry Will Provide $2 Million For The First Year Of The Project For
Drug Users

Just days before Vancouver's precedent-setting injection site for drug users is
set to open, the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority has finally found out who
will pay the $2 million to run it for the first year.

"We've just got word that the ministry of health is going to fund this,"
authority spokesman Clay Adams said late Wednesday. "It's a great reassurance
to us. The province has demonstrated faith in the project and the value of the
project."

Adams said after protracted negotiations among several parties, the health
ministry sent official confirmation Wednesday that it will provide up to $2
million to operate the site until the end of the government's fiscal year in
March.

"The ministry has made no commitment beyond that date because they, like us,
feel that the funding should come from other sources as well."

Mayor Larry Campbell expressed personal thanks to Premier Gordon Campbell for
the funding. "I'm extremely thankful to the premier. He's an ex-mayor -- he
understands the problems."

The mayor has been saying for the past two weeks that the premier had given him
a personal commitment that the province would find the money to fund the site's
operation. However, no one at the provincial government was saying anything
like that to the health authority, which continued to be uncertain as to how it
would actually meet the payroll in the first week without dipping into other
programs.

As well, there were intense negotiations this week between politicians and
bureaucrats from the city, provincial government, federal government and health
authority on the funding issue, with debates over where the money should come
from.

The mayor said Wednesday he didn't believe it was right for it to be drawn from
the new $20 million that has been committed to the Vancouver Agreement, the
special initiative jointly headed by Ottawa, the province and the city that is
aimed at improving the economic and physical health of the Downtown Eastside.

"The Vancouver Agreement shouldn't be used for operating funds because it's a
finite fund," he said.

Although the province is agreeing to front the money for the site's start-up,
provincial health ministry spokeswoman Tara Wilson said all the partners have
written to the federal government to ask if it can take that $2 million from a
special federal fund for health care dedicated to helping provinces make
changes in the way they deliver primary care.

So far, there has been no response from the federal government, Wilson said.

Liberal MP Stephen Owen (Vancouver-Quadra) said he couldn't comment on what is
happening with that request, but said he believed it's appropriate the province
is providing the funding. "It's a public-health facility, which is a provincial
responsibility."

Owen said he has got his political partners in the Vancouver Agreement -- the
mayor and Community Affairs Minister George Abbott -- to agree to holding
community workshops to help identify how the $20 million now available should
be spent and which parts of the four-pillars program it should be applied to.

The injection site, which will be the first of its kind in North America, has
been approved by Health Canada as a pilot project for three years. The federal
government is providing $1.5 million for scientific evaluation. Health Canada
officials were in Vancouver this week doing an inspection of the site before
giving it final approval. Adams said they didn't raise any serious concerns and
he didn't anticipate there would be any delays.

The site is set to open to the media and public Monday. It will make a gradual
transition into operating as an injection site over the next week.

Public-health workers and medical health officers in Canada have been pressing
for trials of safe-injection sites in Canada, among other "harm-reduction"
measures for drug users, as a way of trying to reduce overdose deaths and
exceptionally high HIV and Hepatitis C infection rates among drug addicts. The
situation is particularly acute in Vancouver, which has the country's highest
overdose-death rate and an HIV and Hepatitis C infection rate that was declared
a public health emergency in 1997.

Several European cities have opened injection sites in the past decade and
Sydney, Australia, opened one two years ago.

The sites typically generate vigorous public controversy. Opponents argue that
injection sites simply facilitate drug use and that money would be better spent
opening more detox and treatment services. Supporters say injection sites help
users stay alive, so they can eventually make the decision to go into
treatment, and that they bring new groups of users into contact with health
services, which ultimately leads to more of them getting treatment.