'YOU CAN'T DETOX IF YOU'RE DEAD'

Activists Open Safe Injection Site For Drug Users

VANCOUVER - Leaning against the wall outside the Skyluck Jewelers, one of
the dozens of businesses closed on East Hastings Street because of the
corrosive influence of epidemic drug use, the bone-thin woman asks a
passerby: "You got a rig to spare? Got a rig?"

Here she is, on a bright spring-like day, ready to shoot up anything, with
anybody's needle. And in the process she may contract HIV, or overdose on
the spot, perhaps dying in a nearby alley, curled up in a fetal position as
convulsions rack her body. Hundreds have.

Just a few doors up the street from where the desperate addict is
panhandling for a rig, a door opens from Canada's bleakest sidewalk into a
room filled with light, music -- and, just maybe, hope.

In an unusual event yesterday, a group of social activists in the Downtown
Eastside opened what they want to become North America's first safe
injection site for drug users.

In-Site, as the facility is called by Health Quest, is not much to look at.
There is a bright, freshly painted waiting room and signs that advise you
to take a number and wait until called. Through a second door is a shooting
gallery -- six stainless steel counters with adjacent sinks and mirrors --
where up to 300 addicts a day are expected to inject heroin or cocaine.

They will bring their own drugs, but the rigs -- clean needles, tourniquets
and alcohol swabs -- will be provided by trained staff, who will stand by
in case someone gets sick or has an overdose.

In-Site seems like a simple solution, given that 2,200 people have died of
overdose deaths in British Columbia since 1994, and the spread of HIV has
reached epidemic proportions in the Downtown Eastside.

But getting even this far -- the site is merely a proposed location,
without government sanction to operate -- has been a monumental task for
the harm-reduction proponents advocating safe injection sites.

Kirsten Stuerzbecher, a member of the Health Quest board, said one of the
things that first struck her when she moved to Canada was that there
weren't any safe injection sites -- even in Vancouver, where drug addiction
and related problems have ravished the Downtown Eastside.

"When I came over here the question I was asking myself was, 'Why is this
so hard? What's the problem?' "

Ms. Stuerzbecher said safe injection facilities have long been accepted in
Germany. "What I came to understand is that it is fear," she said of
Canada's reluctance to embrace the concept. "Here we are -- it's a sink,
it's a chair, it's a table. It's nothing really, but people are afraid of it.

"Ultimately it's a fear that having a site like this will send a message
that says, 'It's okay to use drugs.'

"Of course that's not what this is all about at all. It's about saving
lives. It's about getting drug addicts off the streets, out of the back
alleys and into a supervised place like this, where they can get help.

"The vision of the perfect society is for no one to use drugs. But until we
get there, then the goal is to save the lives of those who do. I think that
makes sense."

Liz Edwards, a former nurse who is one of the forces behind In-Site, said
addicts manage to quit drugs only when they decide to help themselves.

"But right now people aren't even being able to get to that place ... You
can't detox if you're dead," she said.

Thousands of tulips were strewn around the In-Site facility yesterday. Each
one represented an overdose victim. The flowers -- more than 2,000 of them
- -- spilled off the counters and lay in stacks along the floor.

Ms. Edwards said Heath Quest is not condoning the use of drugs. It is just
looking for "another piece in the puzzle" to combat the use of heroin,
cocaine and other illicit substances. "For us the issue is that people are
dying," she said.

Health Quest opened the facility to the media yesterday, to let the public
see what a safe injection site looks like, and to prompt the government to
take action.

The Vancouver Coastal Health Authority is currently working on a proposal
to the federal government, that will seek clearance to operate a
safe-injection facility.

Larry Campbell, the recently elected Mayor of Vancouver, has endorsed the
concept. He campaigned on a promise to have a facility in operation by Jan.
1. The city was unable to get its proposal together in time for that date,
however, and now hopes to have filed one by the middle of this month.

Sometime this spring the In-Site facility could become legally operational.
Between now and then, an unknown number of drug addicts will cage rigs from
strangers -- and overdose in the street.