DRUG INJECTION SITE VALUED: POLL

VANCOUVER -- Vancouver's safe-injection facility, under attack by the
federal health minister, has the support of 38 per cent of Canadians,
a new poll suggests.

The Angus Reid survey also found that 23 per cent of Canadians oppose
Insite, which provides clean needles and a 12-seat room where people
can inject heroin, cocaine and morphine under clinical supervision.

Support for Insite was strongest in B.C. and Alberta.

Federal Health Minister Tony Clement has generated controversy in
recent weeks by trashing Insite in front of the Canadian Medical
Association in Montreal and at the XVII International AIDS Conference
in Mexico City.

Thirty-nine per cent of surveyed Canadians told Angus Reid they were
undecided about Insite.

Clement says the facility saves one life a year.

"There are still 50 overdose deaths every year in the Downtown
Eastside and Insite has had no impact on this rate of death," Clement said.

Vancouver Coastal Health, which documented 222 drug overdoses at
Insite last year, says half of them involved full respiratory arrest,
and the victims were saved by facility staff.

"If there wasn't an intervention in them, the person would die," said
Anna Marie D'Angelo, a spokeswoman for the health authority.

Insite costs $2.5 million a year to operate.

Calling the facility "a surrender to a culture of disease and death,"
Clement said the money would be better spent on treating addiction.

Vancouver Coastal contends that Insite refers hundreds of drug users
every year to addictions counselling. Addicts who use the facility
are more likely to enter detox programs, with one in five regular
Insite visitors entering detox, according to the health authority.

Twenty per cent of polled Canadians mistakenly believed the facility
also hands out heroin, cocaine and morphine.

Angus Reid, in questioning 1,005 Canadians from Aug. 15 to 18, broke
the results down by education and income, and found that the
strongest support for Insite came from people with household incomes
of $100,000 or more, and from university graduates.

The poll's margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 per cent, 19 times out of 20.