INJECTION SITES MAY BE A HELP

No city in North America provides drug-injection sites for addicts. The
reason is obvious: the idea of governments facilitating the illegal and
very harmful drug trade is morally troubling.

Yet current methods of stamping out drug use through police enforcement
have not eliminated the problem. Governments are realizing that
harm-reduction policies like needle exchanges -- which attempt to minimize
the damage caused by drug use -- are important. Providing injection sites
is another form of harm reduction.

As an editorial in the latest Canadian Medical Association Journal states,
Canada should be investigating drug-injection sites to see if they would
work here.

A dozen European cities have them, and one has just opened in Australia.
Here in Canada, the city of Vancouver is seriously considering the idea.

What a drug-injection site does is provide a safe, supervised place where
addicts can shoot up. Such a place can help encourage addicts not to share
needles, thereby reducing the spread of HIV and hepatitis. It can prevent
overdoses. Like needle exchange programs, it can be a contact place between
injection drug users and health care workers.

If drug takers use the sites, there will be fewer needles lying around in
inner-city alleys and abandoned houses.

Ideally, one would hope to convince addicts to enter a withdrawal program,
or go on a government methadone program. But harm prevention programs like
needle exchanges -- and, possibly, drug-injection sites -- are also a
useful part of the mix, because they target hard-core users.

Vancouver is being pushed to consider this innovation because of its
enormous drug crisis, but Edmontonians shouldn't feel too smug. There are
thousands of injection drug users in town. If Vancouver sets up
drug-injection sites, we should watch them and learn.