DRUG LAWS CONTRIBUTE TO HIV EPIDEMIC - REPORT

OTTAWA - Valerie Cartledge, a former heroin addict, considers
herself lucky. The 38-year-old from Toronto used to share needles but
never contracted disease. "I don't really know how I got away without
getting anything. I was very lucky," she said in an interview. "I have
been careless, even after I had information."

Cartledge, who now treats her addiction with methadone, said nearly
every drug injection user she knows has some type of disease. The
majority have hepatitis C, and users are increasingly becoming
infected with HIV.

A report released Wednesday said Ottawa isn't doing enough to prevent
the spread of HIV among injection drug users.

In fact, Canada's drug laws and policies contribute to the problem
which has reached crisis proportion, says Injection Drug Use and
HIV/AIDS: Legal and Ethical Issues.

The number of HIV and AIDS incidences caused by injection drug use is
climbing, says the report.

By 1996, half the estimated new HIV infections were among injection
drug users. Although figures vary throughout the country, in major
cities rates that were below five per cent in the late 1980s are now
around 20 per cent or higher.

Rates of hepatitis C reach up to 95 per cent in some areas, says the
report. Hepatitis C is a chronic disease which affects the liver and
left untreated can cause death.

"Canada's response to this public health crisis has been far from
being concertive and effective," said Ralf Jurgens, executive director
of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network which wrote the report with
support from Health Canada.

Jurgens called for Ottawa to immediately consider long- and short-term
solutions to preclude a tragedy similar to the tainted-blood scandal
of the 1980s.

Eventually, Canada must change its drug laws, concludes the report
given to the federal and provincial health ministers.

Following up on two 1997 reports, the report Wednesday emphasized that
the criminal approach to drug use causes more harm than good because,
among other things, it makes users afraid to go to health or social
services for help.

"It is ethically wrong to continue criminalizing approaches to the
control of drug use when these strategies fail to achieve the goals
for which they were designed," said Dr. David Roy, the author of the
ethics section in the report and director of the Centre for Bioethics
of the Clinical Research Institute of Montreal.

Jurgens said Ottawa needs to rethink how it spends on drug-related
problems.

"We spend million and millions for imprisonment when we could spend
this money for treatment. There are studies showing that every dollar
invested for treatment saves us seven dollars that we are currently
spending on health care and imprisonment of those people who need treatment."

The 116-page report lists 66 recommendations, many of which don't
require change to legislation. They include:

- -Needle-exchange programs should be easily accessible to all injection
drug users, including prisoners.

- -Pharmaceutical associations and licensing bodies should encourage
pharmacists to distribute sterile syringes.

- -There should be pilot projects where heroin, cocaine and amphetamines
are administered to help with the treatment.

- -Methadone maintenance programs should be available in all provinces
and territories, including rural areas.

Cartledge, a mother of a three-year-old girl, said that five years ago
she had to beg doctors to help her get off heroin.

"I literally went into the office and said if I don't get treatment, I
don't know if I'll be around much longer. Until I got to that point,
they were reluctant to offer me treatment."

She's been on a methadone program ever since.