BOOZE BIGGER KILLER THAN DRUGS IN VANCOUVER

Heroin and cocaine overdoses grab the headlines, but drinking kills
far more people in Vancouver every year than illicit drugs, according
to a report slated for release later this summer.

A draft copy of the study obtained by The Vancouver Sun shows there
were an average of 297 alcohol-related deaths annually in Vancouver
from 1991 to 1998.

Over the same time period, an average of 147 deaths each year were
listed as drug-induced.

"Despite the attention given to illicit drugs due to their association
with overdose deaths and blood-borne infections, alcohol continues to
be related to a higher number of deaths in Vancouver," Dr. Mark McLean
of the Vancouver Richmond Health board writes in his report, Vancouver
Drug Epidemiology and Drug Crime Statistics 2000.

The report was prepared for the Canadian Community Epidemiology
Network on Drug Use, a clearing house for information on substance
abuse in Canada.

McLean said in an interview Monday that the impact of alcohol may be
even greater than his report indicates.

He tracked only those deaths directly related to alcohol in which
people died from such things as alcohol poisoning or liver damage from
long-term drinking.

The numbers do not include traffic fatalities, homicides and suicides
- -- deaths in which alcohol often figures prominently. Nor do the
statistics reflect the role alcohol plays in many drug overdoses
either by impairing an addict's judgment or by mixing with drugs to
create deadly cocktails.

"It may be that alcohol is an important component of our drug overdose
death rate that we need to pay more attention to," McLean said.

He noted that police efforts to move drug use out of pubs and bars may
help reduce the overdose death rate. "If we can separate drug use from
alcohol use we may end up with less mortality," he said.

John Turvey of the Downtown Eastside Youth Activities Society said
McLean's report highlights a tragic problem that often gets overlooked.

"One of the things we haven't done is really look at the role of
alcohol in our community," Turvey said. "And alcohol is clearly the
most deadly drug in the Downtown Eastside and in the city of Vancouver."

McLean's report shows the community health area encompassing the
Downtown Eastside has the highest alcohol-related death rate at an
average of 21 men and nine women per 10,000. The health area
encompassing Vancouver's West End ranks a distant second, with a death
rate of seven men and two women per 10,000.

"Alcohol has this incredible role and if we would just address that in
the community we could reduce overdose deaths," Turvey said.

He called on officials to crack down on people and establishments that
over serve alcohol to drug users, and educate addicts about the
dangers posed by mixing drugs and alcohol.

"People really don't understand that alcohol has this incredible
facilitating role -- not just as a drug, but as a drug that has a
capacity to incredibly impair people," he said.

McLean said alcohol poses such a serious threat because so many more
people drink than do drugs.

"Whereas illicit drugs are used within a narrow spectrum of our
population, alcohol is used much more widely," he said. "And because
it's a legal substance, because it's used much more widely, we do end
up with people suffering the effects of alcohol in many ways and often
it being the primary cause of their death."

A year ago, the provincial government acknowledged alcohol's deadly
role by pulling rice wine off corner store shelves and permitting
sales only in liquor stores. A committee whose members included
representatives of city police, aboriginal agencies and Chinese
restaurateurs concluded that rice wine sales to "unintended consumers"
- -- usually native Indians on the Downtown Eastside -- had resulted in
an epidemic of ill health and death.

The B.C. coroner's office recorded at least 39 deaths in 1998 linked
to rice alcohol -- almost double the number recorded in 1997.