POLICE THWART ATTEMPT TO HELP ADDICTS

Closing A Sidewalk Needle Exchange Shakes Coalition Of Civic Agencies

A police raid on a Vancouver Downtown Eastside sidewalk needle exchange
that effectively shut the service down has set off a small bomb under a
fragile coalition that had worked together for the past two years on drug
issues.

Police say they were just enforcing the law last Friday when they did
undercover surveillance of two volunteers from the Vancouver Area Network
of Drug Users, which runs a night-time needle exchange at Main and Hastings
under the auspices of the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority.

Inspector John McKay said his officers saw a female volunteer smoking crack
at the table, both volunteers warning others if uniformed police were in
the area, and the male volunteer "steering" an undercover agent to a
dealer. As a result, he sent in half a dozen officers to break up the scene
and confiscate the tables and tent used for the exchange, which police said
does not have the necessary city permit. No one was charged.

But health officials, researchers, VANDU and city staff say police seem to
have reversed their cooperative approach of the past two years and have
suddenly opted for a harder line because they are frustrated with their
lack of success in cleaning up Main and Hastings and are increasingly
philosophically opposed to harm reduction.

Harm reduction is the phrase for a strategy many health officials are now
adding to their drug- and alcohol-addiction programs, where they look at
ways to get addicts and alcoholics to take better care of themselves.

"It's unfortunate they went this route," said Tim Christie, the manager of
clinical services for the health authority, which has been struggling for
years to improve health conditions in the Downtown Eastside after Vancouver
set world records for drug-overdose deaths and HIV and hepatitis C infections.

Christie said Tuesday that Vancouver police Inspector Ken Frail had said at
a meeting last week, which all the involved agencies in the area attend
every Tuesday, that police had concerns about some of the activities at the
exchange site. The exchange has operated for almost two years after police
and other agencies agreed to give the experimental project a try -- a first
for the city in allowing addicts to play a role in addiction programs.
VANDU instituted a policy at the time that volunteers, who are admitted
drug users, not use any drugs while working at the table.

Christie was stunned to find out what police had done.

"I showed up at the office yesterday and the whole world came to an end,"
he said. Christie said the VANDU needle exchange is crucial for the city.
It dispenses 1,200 needles a day in the 10 hours it runs from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m.

Health researchers Thomas Kerr and Evan Woods noted that two recent studies
they have done found that a lack of access to needles was the primary cause
of people sharing needles -- a known risk factor for contracting disease --
and that 90 per cent of those surveyed in the open drug market got their
needles from the VANDU exchange.

Frail said that police have no intention of shutting down the needle
exchange, saying that if VANDU volunteers wanted to stand on the sidewalk
to distribute needles until they get a city permit for their tent and
tables, police would not intervene unless they were engaging in criminal
activity.

While he insisted that police were only interested in stopping criminal
behaviour, he also said several times that he has problems with the way the
needle exchange operates in general.

"This is addicts giving needles to addicts. I question, myself, how that's
going to create a useful intervention. I don't see how we're going to break
that cycle by giving needles without some kind of medical referral. I'm
looking at all of this, where they have stoned people giving out needles.
If they're going to distribute needles, they need to do it ethically and
responsibly."

Frail said it was his right as a police officer to comment on how a health
service should be run when his officers were having to deal with the
consequences.

"They make no effort to recover needles. We are the people the community
comes to when they find needles on their property. So I think I've got the
right to ask that question."