INJECTION SITES TOUTED AS 'BEST CHANCE'

Supervised facilities for addicts cut down overdose deaths and improve
neighbourhoods, health officer tells council

Provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall says safe injection sites are
the best option for dealing with Vancouver's drug problem and keeping
addicts alive until they decide to seek treatment.

"I think it's the best chance that the city has to deal with the injection
drug use and substance use problem that the city has," said the province's
top medical official, who travelled from Victoria to address the issue
before Vancouver city council on Thursday afternoon.

Kendall was among 24 delegations scheduled to make presentations to council
on a motion by Councillor Tim Louis that coucil support efforts to initiate
supervised safe drug consumption facilities.

Kendall said safe injection sites in Frankfurt, Germany, helped reduce the
number of people shooting up in public and dying from overdoses from "the
hundreds to very, very few" and there was anecdotal evidence indicating the
facilities brought some people into treatment programs.

"The evidence from Europe is that if you do this right, you can improve
the... neighbourhood and the neighbourhood looks better," Kendall told council.

While he conceded there are potential negative impacts of such a facilitiy,
Kendall rejected assertions that it would increase the number of drug dealers.

"My answer is that you already have one of the largest open air drug
markets in the Lower Mainland in the Downtown Eastside.

"It's hard to imagine you'd get more drug dealers," he said, adding that
drug users from other areas would be unlikely to migrate near a safe
injection facility.

"That hasn't been the experience in Europe," Kendall said. "I doubt that
would be the experience here. If there was one, I doubt that it would be
noticeable given the current numbers."

Libby Davies, the federal MP whose Vancouver East riding includes the
Downtown Eastside, had an assistant deliver a letter outlining her support
for safe injection sites.

Sue Bennett, a member of the Gastown Community Safety Society, said she is
a 30-year resident of the area and opposes an injection facility.

"I no longer have faith in the system," she said.

"This is just another hook to go in the community. The community needs
relief from the addicts."

The debate will likely shape Vancouver's coming municipal elections.

The issue surfaced as a key one after the board of the ruling Non-Partisan
Association announced Mayor Philip Owen, a longtime proponent of safe
injection sites, would have to run for the party's mayoral nomination.

Owen chose instead to leave municipal politics.

But he, his suporters and some insiders have said he was pushed out by a
dominant group of board members, some of whom were opposed to his plan to
tackle drug-addiction issues and some of whom wanted Councillor Jennifer
Clarke to be mayor.

Clarke, who last year voted in favour of Owen's four-pillar approach, which
included harm reduction and safe injection sites, recently said that such
sites are not the best option for the city.

The schism within the NPA threatens to make this fall's election very
heated, but Louis, a member of the Coalition of Progressive Electors, said
forcing NPA councillors to pick a side on the injection site issue was not
his intent.

"It may well be the outcome, in fact, I predict it will be the outcome, but
that was not the objective," he said.

Clarke said she does not oppose safe injection sites as long as they are
part of a larger strategy "linking some treatment and law-enforcement
scheme whose purpose is to move the addict into a continuum of care and
away from an addicted lifestyle."

Because it was the fourth item on the agenda and at least two dozen
delegations were scheduled to speak on the issue, no vote was made on the
resolution, which was held over until next Thursday.