SWISS ADDICTS 'TREATED LIKE HUMANS'

ZURICH - Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell stood in a narrow tiled room here
and watched heroin addicts "cranking" their fixes.

And Campbell said he's convinced he's on the right track when it comes to
using safe injection sites to help clean up the Downtown Eastside's drug
problems.

"It confirmed everything I read with regards to reduction of deaths, of
HIV, of crime and the whole gamut," Campbell told The Province last night.

Campbell is in Switzerland to deliver Vancouver's 2010 Winter Olympic bid
book to the international Olympic Committee in Lausanne tomorrow.

He took a side-trip to Zurich, a city of 1.2 million, to visit one of this
city's five safe injection sites.

To get into the site, which is in the downtown business district, Campbell
went through a nondescript door in a building surrounded by offices.

"You wouldn't even know it's there," said the former cop and chief coroner
of B.C. "It's off one of the main streets and is run by the health authority."

He said Zurich found that any fears the sites would become a "honey pot"
attracting users from all parts of the city proved unfounded.

And staff know that if dealers start hanging around, which has happened
infrequently, they call the police, he added.

Like Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, Zurich had its own "Needle Park" near
the central station.

When police shut that down, it moved to another disused station "and that's
when they started thinking, 'This isn't working. What should we do?'" added
Campbell.

The injection room Campbell visited had a cafeteria nearby where addicts
could sit and smoke. It had two sets of showers, a clothing room and two
washers and dryers.

"They were treated like human beings, which is critical," said Campbell.

In the injection room, a nurse is always on standby, and an addict is given
a kidney bowl with two needles, two spoons, a syringe and clean-up pads.

There was also an "inhalation room" where addicts could snort cocaine and a
place where addicts could take crack cocaine.

Campbell said he's pushing for the injection sites as a simple health issue
and wants to set up a scientific study by March to, measure the effects and
benefits.

The move needs the go-ahead from the federal government but Campbell says
he's confident that will come.