CLARKE CONVINCED OF VALUE OF SAFE INJECTION SITES

The Vancouver councillor returned from Europe impressed with strategies
used to fight drug addiction.

One of Vancouver's most influential city councillors has returned from a
tour of European cities convinced of the value of their strategies for drug
addicts -- resource centres for addicts, relatively easy access to
methadone and safe-injection sites.

Crime has gone down, the open drug market that used to exist in Frankfurt
and Amsterdam has been nearly eliminated, and young people are kicking
addiction, thanks to intense one-on-one programs, says Jennifer Clarke.

But Clarke, in a report to council on her visit, warned that those cities
have two advantages over Vancouver --money and power -- that make those
programs work.

They have strong police and legal powers that allow them, in Frankfurt for
example, to put any addicts not considered Frankfurt residents on a train
back to their home town. They can prohibit open drug consumption, run a
drug court, and get a 75-per-cent conviction rate with stiff penalties for
dealers.

Amsterdam, long considered a bastion of liberalism, has recently introduced
a new measure that allows the courts to send addicts to a special prison
for mandatory, abstinence-oriented drug treatment for two years if they
have been convicted of more than five offences in a year and refuse
treatment.

The two cities also have political and financial power. Their city budgets
are five to seven times higher than Vancouver's for populations not much
higher. Councillors have almost ministerial powers to control health and
social programs.

Because of that, they can make relatively independent decisions on what
kind of drug policies and programs they want. They can also spend $5 to $10
million supporting them, as Amsterdam and Frankfurt do respectively.

Clarke's report comes as Vancouver, which international treatment experts
say has one of the worst open drug markets in the world, is on the brink of
deciding what to do about its own drug policy.

Mayor Philip Owen has consistently expressed strong support for developing
a better drug policy, based on the principle that it has to include
enforcement, harm reduction, treatment and support. But the city has been
embroiled in an escalating controversy on the topic for months.

A group of Gastown, Chinatown and Strathcona business leaders are bitterly
opposed to a Vancouver/Richmond health board proposal to open a resource
centre for drug addicts in the Downtown Eastside, something that would have
been a first step toward a European-style support and treatment system.

Their opposition was fierce enough that Owen declared a moratorium in
August on any "new" social services in the Downtown Eastside, which some
saw as him caving in to political pressure.

On the other side, social-service groups, health-care providers, and
addicts themselves have been urging council to start developing a better
policy than the current chaotic approach, which allows dealers and addicts
to occupy several blocks of Hastings Street, shoot up in back alleys, and
generally turn a significant portion of the Downtown Eastside into a no-go
zone for many mainstream city residents and tourists.

Clarke noted that even in Amsterdam and Frankfurt -- which are considered
progressive -- there were massive community protests against parts of the
programs, particularly the safe-injection sites.

In Frankfurt, 400 people turned out to protest against the establishment of
one injection site. Finally, people were convinced to allow it for six
weeks, with police nearby to make sure addicts didn't hang around shooting
up publicly. After the six weeks and much reduction in drug use on the
street, only five people turned up to a second city meeting.