PLANNED SAFE-INJECTION SITE FACES OPPOSITION IN AREA

The empty storefront at 213 Dunlevy St. is plain and stark and white, about
the last place you would expect to become a battleground in Vancouver's war
over illegal drug use.

But it's likely to become a safe-injection site for the addicts who drift
in and out of consciousness in Oppenheimer Park across the street.

Vowing to use every legal weapon in its arsenal to oppose it, a coalition
of business people and property owners from the Gastown, Chinatown,
Strathcona and Victory Square areas raised an outcry Wednesday over the
soon-to-open site.

In a press release, the group, which calls itself the Community Alliance,
accused the Vancouver-Richmond health board of using public money to fund
illegal drug use.

The board provides an annual grant to the Vancouver-Area Network of Drug
Users, whose project coordinator and driving force, Ann Livingston, has
rented the space.

Standing inside it Wednesday, she didn't spell out in so many words what
the room would become, but she left no doubt about her intentions of
opening a safe-injection site in Vancouver.

The social activist said she simply can't sit by and witness suffering
without doing something to curb the escalating death-by-overdose rate on
the city's Downtown Eastside.

Drug-treatment programs don't work, she said flatly. Only three out of 100
people are still drug-free one year after going through them at a cost of
$20,000 per person, she added.

But Community Alliance co-chairman Bryce Rositch said the health board's
$300,000 annual grant to the drug users' network, widely known as VANDU,
allows public funds to be used for an illegal activity.

In a city where smoking a cigarette is illegal in many public places, "it's
ridiculous to be spending public funds on that," he said.

He predicted the safe-injection site will draw unsavoury people and
activities to an area that now has a day care, a home for battered women
and seniors' apartments.

Avrill Peters, manager of media relations for the health board, denied the
charge, saying VANDU is not involved in the site and that Livingston is
acting on her own.

Livingston said she hopes to attract volunteers who want to do something
about the city's drug problem. More specifically, she wants to open a
centre offering heroin and methadone treatments and a safe-injection site.