CHURCH THREATENS TO OPEN INJECTION SITE

Illegal Refuge For Drug Users Could Be Opened To Spur Pilot Project

The First United Church in the heart of the Downtown Eastside says it is
ready to open an illegal temporary site where drug users can safely inject
drugs if governments drag their feet on starting a pilot project.

In the meantime, it is putting on view today a mock-up injection site that
the public can visit to see what such a facility might look like. And it
has added its voice to those calling for a harm-reduction approach to drug
use.

"It isn't that we are pro addiction, but we are against deaths that don't
need to happen," says Reverend Ruth Wright, the church's executive
director. "We've just seen too many deaths."

Wright said the church was approached several months ago by street nurses
and agreed to let the Harm Reduction Action Society, a group lobbying for a
comprehensive health-care approach to addiction, build a temporary model of
an injection site in its chapel.

"We did discuss this carefully," said Wright. The church's board recognized
the fact that it would be controversial, but, she said, "we just get
concerned about seeing so many people dying."

Friday, volunteers were hard at work putting together a facsimile of a site
similar to those found in Frankfurt, with tables, mirrors, sterilizing
equipment, posters with site rules, referral services, and health
information.

The mock-up will be open for public viewing from noon to 6 p.m. today at the
church, 320 East Hastings.

Dean Wilson, who works with a drug-users' group and is the board chairman of
the harm-reduction society, said it was gratifying to have First United
stand behind the society.

"In other countries where safe-injection sites are now in place, it took the
courageous actions of faith communities to get them established by hosting
illegal demonstration sites, as First United is prepared to do."

The church, at the corner of Hastings and Gore, already provides a number of
services for local residents, some of them unique to the church, for local
residents. It hosts a drop-in centre for sex-trade workers - again operated
by an independent community group-runs a foot-washing program twice a week,
and lets people sleep in the church pews during the days.

As well, it provides coffee, free secondhand clothes, a mail service,
paralegal advocacy, and a literacy program.

The United Church in the Kings Cross area of Sydney, Austrailia, manages
that country's only "injecting room," as it's called there, which was
launched in May. Before that, it allowed a temporary, illegal facility to
operate as a way of prodding governments into action.

Wright said it's unlikely First United could host a permanent injection
site.

"We don't have adequate facilities for a real site," she said.

Safe-injection sites have become the most controversial element of recently
developed, multi-pronged national and local drug strategies in Canada
because opponents see them as the latest and most disastrous step towards a
dangerous liberalism concerning addictive drugs.

But health advocates have insisted they have to be included in any
comprehensive plan for treating addiction, so that people who aren't yet
prepared to try to quit using drugs will have direct contact with
health-care workers.

That direct contact, they say, will reduce the number of overdose deaths,
reduce the spread of HIV and Hepatitis C, and provide people with a path to
treatment.