SAFE SITE STILL DRAWS MIXED REVIEWS

Unsanctioned Injections Continue In Vancouver

It's 1 a.m. Sunday morning and the stretch of Carrall Street between
Gastown and Pigeon Park is hopping.

Two bikers on unmufflered hogs roar past, followed almost immediately by
two police cars with their sirens blaring in a chase that will go halfway
across downtown before they nab the pair.

A marijuana-packed silver pipe is circulating among a clutch of
20-somethings in the alley who have briefly ducked out of the Brickyard, a
popular alternative club where vibrations from Portland's The Prids are
throbbing through the walls tonight.

And next door, at 327 Carrall, it's Night 90 for Vancouver's unsanctioned
injection site for drug users.

A small cluster of people are hanging around out front, where the site's
couch has been dragged out for the night, arguing with a couple of bar-beat
cops patrolling the street, telling them to get lost because they're
intimidating users coming to the site.

Their presence has temporarily arrested the otherwise steady stream of
users who have been filing through the tiny drop-in centre all night to use
the two small booths at the back.

There, they can get clean needles, clean water, a quiet place to inject
where they can take their time, and advice if they need it from registered
nurse Megan Oleson on how to inject properly, instead of just jabbing at
their arms, popping veins and starting abscesses.

As soon as Constable Cividino and his partner move on, after a few
exchanges of pleasantries on both sides -- "Yeah, we're really the bad
guys, we're really the ones sticking cocaine in your arm" versus "You're
not supposed to be here. Why don't you just leave people alone" -- a
trickle resumes.

Among them is Pat McQuarrie, who lives at the Washington Hotel up the
street. She comes in almost every night to inject cocaine.

A small, wiry 48-year-old with strong, tattoed arms, McQuarrie prefers the
site to her hotel room.

"There's always clean rigs here. And you know you're safe here with the
cops, they won't come in."

They might stand outside, but they've never entered the site.

And it's better than being out on the street during the police crackdown.
She spent two hours one night, lined up against a wall near the Carnegie
Centre with a whole group of people, while police checked all their
criminal records via computer.

McQuarrie, an articulate woman who says she has a master's degree in
forestry and worked in that field before she got hooked and ultimately did
a five-year jail term on an assault conviction, clearly isn't proud of
being a cocaine addict.

She's on methadone and about to start counselling.

In the meantime, the site is "a good place to hide out."

The site opened April 7 -- the same day that Vancouver police kicked off
their Downtown Eastside special team with a goal was to break up the open
drug market on Hastings Street -- started up by some who decided that if
police were going to chase people off the streets and out of the alleys,
there had to be a place for them to go.

They were also enraged that police chose to start a massive enforcement
campaign when nothing else from the city's ambitious "four-pillars" drug
strategy had advanced, especially the move to open an injection site with
Health Canada permission.

At first, police threatened to close down the impromptu site.

But three months later, in spite of the fact that it began with no legal
permission, no money and no staff -- and in spite of complaints from some
local businesses and residents -- it's still going.

About 50 drug users in total frequent it, at a rate of about 15-25 a night,
with another 70-100 who come by just to nod out, play chess, talk with
someone, or get a free coffee.

Users enforce the no-violence, no-dealing, no-money-exchange rules and the
room feels more peaceful than the streets outside on a noisy night.

And, although Oleson and others complain that police hang around the site,
intimidating users who might be thinking of coming in or jacking up others
who are leaving, police haven't charged anyone using or volunteering at the
site or, in fact, even set foot inside.

One woman even showed up saying that an officer had told her she should
quit injecting in the alley and go over to the safe site -- a hint of how
all Vancouver police in future might deal with injection sites.

The site's continued existence has come about thanks to the efforts of a
wildly diverse group of people who range from Regent College religious
studies instructor Dave Diewert, who donated the space initially, to a
council of drug users who set the house rules, to Oleson, who's put in four
hours a night for free every night since the first week, and to Christian
Owen, the son of former mayor Philip Owen, who has not just kicked in
$1,000 to keep it going, but taken it on himself to help the group set up a
legal non-profit with a bank account so that it has a mechanism to raise
money for continued operation.

Owen, who is on the board of a society called Safe Sites Save Lives along
with Patsy Thorpe, the mother of a young west-side woman who died of a drug
overdose last year, downplays his contribution.

"I went to them after I read the article about them opening up and said,
"May I help?" said Owen, who lives in Shaughnessy and works in the
securities industry in the heart of Vancouver's business district. "I came
in late in the game."

The real credit, he says, belongs to people like Oleson, Jill Chettiar, a
24-year-old activist who deals with the organizational side of the site,
and longtime advocates Ann Livingston and Dean Wilson, who got the site going.

Owen is hoping that, with the society now legally in place, it will make it
easier for people to donate the $2,500 a month he'd like to see to keep the
site going -- $1,200 a month for basic rent and utilities, some money to
pay Oleson a salary, and a cigarette and food fund, with all the money to
be controlled by the site's operators.

Owen, who has had family friends personally affected by addiction
tragedies, ferociously backed his father's campaign to create a drug
strategy that emphasized better health care for addicts, not just
enforcement, which created a rift between the mayor and the political party
he had represented for years.

Now, he says, it's important to keep the site going, since there's no
guarantee when the authorized site will open.

"I want this to be a burr under the saddle of the levels of government
until something happens."

Thomas Kerr, a health policy analyst for the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal
Network who has done extensive research on Vancouver drug users, said the
site has been important because it's provided a model for how a user-run,
minimum-rules site can bring in and help a marginalized group of people.

He said Oleson -- a baseball-hat-wearing young woman with a low-key,
empathetic style -- has been especially good at helping women (who
typically have to rely on someone else to help them inject) learn how to
take care of themselves.

Of course, not everyone is thrilled with the site.

This Sunday morning, Brickyard bouncer Jordon Appleby, who has just chased
off someone begging from one of his patrons out for a smoke, says it's been
a major hassle for the club.

"There's fights, I see needles on the ground, there's a lot of hookers down
here."

Another clubber, Jarrod O'Dell, also out smoking, disagrees with him,
saying there isn't anything down there that hasn't been there for years.

But Appleby, who repeats the street rumour that the site has been started
up by dealers who wanted a place for their users to go, insists it's become
worse.

The Gastown Business Improvement Association and residents at the Van Horne
across the street have complained several times to police that the site is
attracting dealers.

Kerr said he doubts that.

"Pigeon Park has historically been one of the major dealing spots, along
with the area around the West Hotel, down the block, Main and Hastings, and
Oppenheimer Park."

Constable Tony Zanatta, stationed two blocks away at Main and Hastings this
particular night, says -- just before he's called to a man with a machete
outside the Stanley Hotel on Alexander -- the site has been a non-entity in
terms of generating trouble, because it's open so few hours and so
sporadically, although there were some complaints about people defecating
in the alley.

Mayor Larry Campbell says he also has heard the complaints.

But he's not moved to do anything at this point.

"The alternative is to go back to where we were. As it is now, we are
providing a form of harm reduction."