SAFE INJECTION SITE ABOUT TO BECOME REALITY

VANCOUVER -- The first safe-injection site for drug users on the continent
has been built and is ready to open.

Located on the 100 block of East Hastings where the city's most active open
drug market operates, the facility was created by a Downtown Eastside
non-profit group known for its innovative work creating housing and support
for drug users in the neighbourhood.

"We built it because we were frustrated at how many people are still dying
of overdoses," said Liz Evans, a nurse who is one of the founders of the
Portland Hotel Society, which currently houses about 250 people in the
Downtown Eastside in four buildings. The society also runs a life skills
centre for addicts.

"This is a space that restores some safety and dignity to the people with
this problem."

Monday, Evans, her partner Mark Townsend, and others were putting the
finishing touches on the storefront facility, called, InSite, putting up
signs and bringing in 2,200 tulips to represent the people who have died of
overdose deaths in B.C. since 1994.

The site, a 1,500-square-foot space on the street on the north side of
Hastings Street, includes six "stalls" for people to inject, with a sink
and mirror at each one, an observation platform at the back of the room, a
spacious waiting room and the feel of a low-budget art gallery, with its
high ceilings, white walls and simple furniture.

It's modelled after safe-injection sites in Frankfurt, Germany, and Sydney,
Australia, and was built with the help of community activists. The $30,000
cost of the renovations was covered by donations and volunteer work.

At the moment, only the injection site has been built on the ground floor,
but Evans and Townsend said the ideal would be to expand into nearby vacant
space to provide more sophisticated counselling services and to create a
detox/respite residence on the floor above.

The property is owned by a Korean man, a longtime landlord in the Downtown
Eastside, who is enthusiastic about what Evans and Townsend have already
done to improve the street.