ACTIVISTS, DRUG USERS SEEK FUNDS FOR SAFE-INJECTION ROOMS

Health-care Advocates And Addicts Say The Sites 'Save Lives Otherwise
Lost' And Are Too Important To Wait For City Policy

A group made up of Vancouver health-care advocates and drug users will
announce today it is willing to set up two pilot safe-injection sites
now if someone will put up the money.

Warren O'Briain, one of the directors of the Harm Reduction Action
Society said the group believes such sites are too important to wait
until the city implements its new drug policy, which may or may not
include safe-injection facilities.

"They save lives otherwise lost to overdoses," O'Briain said. "We know
that safe-injection rooms help the most marginalized and at-risk drug
users to get health care, counselling and treatment. We are asking the
three levels of government to step up to the plate."

O'Briain says the group believes safe sites are only part of the
solution, just one piece of the puzzle the society has decided to take
on in an attempt to improve health and public order in the Downtown
Eastside.

He says the sites are meant to work in conjunction with the
comprehensive approach that was announced by the City of Vancouver
this week, an approach that emphasizes strong policing and sentencing,
more kinds of treatment, harm-reduction strategies like safe sites,
and prevention.

"The other things need this little thing to work and this little piece
needs the other things if it's going to work," he said.

"You can build up elaborate treatment and policing, but if you don't
have low-threshold, street-level services that are able to help people
immediately, then all you end up with is a legacy of missed
opportunities and failure for those most in need."

Health-care professionals in many countries have supported
harm-reduction strategies such as safe-injection sites, saying they
are necessary not only to improve the health of addicts but also to
prevent AIDS and hepatitis C from spreading to the general population.

The Vancouver group formed in March after a conference on what to do
about drugs in Vancouver and has spent six months researching how to
run a workable safe-injection site. Some members, including a nurse, a
researcher from the Dr. Peter AIDS Centre, a representative of the
Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, and O'Briain, who works with
AIDS Vancouver, recently visited Frankfurt to study what works and
what doesn't work there.

The group says it would like to open two rooms, each open for eight
hours a day and staffed by a team of five health-care workers.
O'Briain did not have a dollar figure on what that would cost.

The report outlines four legal options the group could pursue, in
order to legally open a safe-injection site under the current Criminal
Code laws on illegal substances.

O'Briain said the process for establishing safe-injection sites would
likely work much the way needle exchanges did when they were opened 10
years ago.

Like the safe-injection site his group is proposing, needle exchanges
were also started by non-profit groups that got government funding and
also had to negotiate tricky legal terrain, since a used needle
technically contains traces of a banned substance.

News of the planned announcement was received cautiously by at least
two potential funding groups.

"Certainly we are interested in exploring this approach, but we're not
going to get out in front," said Jack Altman, vice-president for
community health services at the Vancouver/Richmond health board.

Altman says the board has no plans to set up safe-injection sites
itself. And he said there would be a lot of legal, licensing and
political issues to resolve before the board would consider
contributing any money to a pilot program.

"But if we sat down around a table and people said it may make sense,
it might be a good pilot project for us."

Vancouver Mayor Philip Owen was more negative.

"This is premature and inappropriate," said Owen, whose plan announced
earlier this week has set off a debate about the two most
controversial items, safe-injection sites and support for a medical
experiment in giving heroin to hardcore users.

Owen said the group should be working with the city process, which
will see two months of public discussion of its plan, instead of just
announcing "one-off" solutions.

"They should allow us to engage the public. The one-off starts have
never been effective."

Dr. Peter Centre researcher Tom Kerr said the harm-reduction group
doubts injection sites would attract any more addicts to Vancouver.

That hasn't happened in Frankfurt, which has had safe-injection sites
for eight years.

Kerr pointed out that while 64 per cent of addicts in a recent survey
said they came from outside Vancouver -- a figure many people have
interpreted to mean Vancouver is a mecca for drug users -- that
percentage is actually lower than the number of people in the general
population who come from outside the province. The 1991 census
indicated 69 per cent of all people in the Lower Mainland actually
come from outside the province.