COMPREHENSIVE HEALTH SERVICES AIMED AT CLOSING DRUG 'MARKET'

Ottawa, Victoria And The City Get Together To Fund A New Health Centre In
The Downtown Eastside

A coalition of politicians working in rare harmony announced a plan Friday
to close Vancouver's open drug market and set up a comprehensive
health-care system in the Downtown Eastside to clean up and extend the
lives of addicts.

That will mean a new "health contact centre," a mini-emergency room, and
expanded detox and sobering services for the area, along with the already
planned drug-users resource centre.

But it won't include the controversial safe-injection sites that have been
an integral part of European drug strategies.

Federal MP Hedy Fry, provincial MLA Jenny Kwan and Vancouver Mayor Philip
Owen announced $14 million in funding for the new innitiatives, warning
that they are only a first step in the five-year Vancouver Agreement plan
to bring all levels of government together to tackle the city's social
problems.

"We're just trying to lay the foundation here," said Kwan. I want to
acknowledge that much more work needs to be done."

Deputy chief Constable Gary Greer said police welcomed the announcement.

"We've been asking for these resources for many years."

He said this will give police options besides arresting people or just
leaving them on the street. Once a greater number of addicts are being
treated at health facilities, that will leave police free to concentrate on
dealers and hard-core addicts who refuse treatment, he said.

The announcement comes as a group of businesspeople and residents in
surrounding neighbourhoods are escalating protests against what they say is
a growing concentration of services for drug users in the area. They
maintain that any new services will only help increase the population of
addicts to the detriment of the remaining residents.

The group, called Community Alliance, is planning a protest march today.

The Alliance has been putting heavy pressure on Vancouver city council not
to introduce any new social services. It was successful in getting Owen,
who has otherwise been very supportive of a plan to tackle the city's drug
problem with something besides just police enforcement, to announce a
90-day moratorium on new services in August.

On the other side, health groups and Downtown Eastside community advocates
have been pushing the city hard to do something besides simply try to chase
people away or let the neighbourhood continue to deteriorate.

While many of them said the plan announced Friday was a good first step, it
was missing a crucial element.

"If we really want to change the street scene, we need the fourth pillar -
safe fixing sites," said Muggs Sigurgeirson. "Until people have those,
where will they go to fix? The street."

But Owen said Vancouver won't have any safe-injection sites until other
cities are willing to put them in.

"Otherwise, we'll have 20,000 addicts here instead of 5,000."

And he repeatedly stressed that the ultimate goal of the five-year
Vancouver Agreement will be to spread detox, treatment, and other addiction
services out in the city and region.

The Vancouver/Richmond health board doesn't have any sites picked out yet
for the planned new health contact centre, new treatment centre, or new
non-residential detox services.