FLAWED FIGURES SHOW TIDY, ELUSIVE GROUP OF ADDICTS

Re: Opposition to safe injection site based on flimsy evidence, Nov 21

I am not opposed to safe injections sites in the context of the
four-pillars approach. However, at present, we only have one pillar
in place and, at this rate, it will be 20 years before we see any
significant progress against drug addiction.

In reviewing the statistics in the article, I would like to point out
the following:

Dr. Thomas Kerr states that the present number of users is 7,410 but
that represents, at the best, 10 per cent "of the injections
occurring in the neighbourhood." That leaves 66,690 injections in the
neighbourhood not taking place at the supervised injection site.

According to the graphs, in week 18 of the 'study', there were only
two instances of public drug injection, only one publicly discarded
syringe and approximately 170 items discarded during those two
instances of public injection -- all this over seven days in an area
of 10 city blocks.

What do we learn from this 'pro-injection site' data? We have an
extremely tidy and elusive group of addicts in Vancouver -- those
doing the over 66,000 injections -- but they only document two public
users a week over 10 blocks, discarding one syringe and 170 other
items . . . those are the two untidy users.

Now that kind of conclusive (and obviously flawed) proof has got to
impress the Conservatives -- the authors of this study must think
they can provide a couple of graphs and we are all impressed.

Wayne G. Mercer

Delta