SAFE SITES NOT THE BEST DRUG STRATEGY, CLARKE SAYS

Would-Be Mayor Rejects Owen Plan, Advocates Focus On Drug Treatment

Supervised drug injection sites for addicts are not the best option for
Vancouver because they don't stop addicts from stealing or prostituting
themselves to buy drugs, says the woman who wants to be mayor.

In statements that repudiate part of the drug strategy that current Mayor
Philip Owen has championed for the years, Vancouver Councillor Jennifer
Clarke said she believes the city should focus instead on providing more
treatment for addicts -- which is also part of the current plan.

And she said she isn't sure that she would support Vancouver's involvement
in a proposed Health Canada pilot project for supervised-injection sites,
something Owen has been working on with other Canadian mayors and the
federal government for the past year.

"I'd need to know what the pilot consists of, what's going to happen, where
it's going to go. I am concerned about it because I think it makes it
appear that ... a safe-injection site is giving the addicts their heroin.
It's not. It's basically giving them a place to shoot up, but they're still
having to steal."

Owen was taken aback at the news of Clarke's stand. Clarke, along with all
other councillors, voted in favour of the city's drug strategy last year,
which included a recommendation that the city look at the possibility of
supervised-injection sites.

"I'm in a little shock," said Owen. He said all the arguments for the
benefits of safe consumption sites were in the document Clarke and others
approved.

"So what's the surprise here? What's the change in attitude?"

Clarke's comments on injection sites come after her weekend announcement
that she will seek the Non-Partisan Association's nomination for mayor.
Owen announced last week that he will not be seeking re-election -- in part
because the NPA board pushed him out over his drug strategy.

Owen said evidence shows that injection sites have demonstrable health
benefits and that they help with public order because people are injecting
indoors instead of in the streets and lanes.

"You get it out of the public realm."

However, Owen said that with the election campaign already in full swing,
there will likely be a lot of "political gymnastics" like this. "We're off
into the journey of confusion and backflips and doubletalk on both sides of
the fence."

In the meantime, he said, he will move ahead with all parts of the plan,
including the injection-site pilot project, because the public, the federal
government and medical health officers across the country support it.

Clarke said she believes focusing on treatment is the best way to achieve
the city's two goals of public health and public order.

While acknowledging that injection sites have some health benefits, Clarke
said that has to be weighed against the problem of public order.

"If the point is a balance between public health and public order, then you
do not solve the public-order problem by giving people a place to inject
when they're still using a street drug that they're having to steal or
prostitute to finance their habit," she said.

Clarke said that sites only work well when they are part of a tightly
meshed health system -- something she said doesn't exist here -- that moves
addicts quickly and effectively from simply injecting to getting treatment.

She says she was told in Frankfurt that the safe-injection sites have been
successful in getting most addicts to move to methadone or other forms of
treatment because they're so closely linked to the health system.

The remaining "intractable" population is mainly composed of illegal aliens
who don't have access to Germany's socialized medicine and so can't get
treatment, she said.

Thomas Kerr, a Vancouver health researcher who has studied
supervised-injection sites around the world, said Clarke's opinions
contradict the evidence.

"Treatment won't do anything for these people," he said.