POLICE OFFICERS PAN SAFE-INJECTION SITES

Delegates to national police conference in Victoria vote unanimously
to endorse national drug strategy

Safe-injection site proponents in Vancouver and Victoria will have to
forge ahead without the support of rank-and-file police officers
across the country.

Around 200 delegates at the Canadian Police Association's annual
general meeting in Victoria voted unanimously Friday to oppose safe
injections sites, instead calling on Prime Minister Stephen Harper to
create a national drug strategy focusing on education, treatment and
prevention.

"Safe-injection sites are not going to solve the drug issues in our
community," said CPA vice-president Const. Tom Stamaktakis. "This is
a significant issue for our members."

Stamatakis, a Vancouver police officer and president of the Vancouver
Police Union, said rank-and-file officers have seen few positive
results from his city's three-year experiment with legalized drug use
at a facility known as InSite.

"We're not seeing improvements as a result of the safe-injection
site," he said. "In our experience, myself and the other officers
that work those streets, things are worse than they've ever been."

Safe-injection sites are seen as one aspect of harm reduction regime
dubbed the four pillars approach.

Stamatakis said officers say the other three pillars - education,
prevention and treatment - are being pushed aside in favour of
legalized drug use.

"There's a sense of pervasiveness, entitlement and enabling," he
said. "Our officers are unanimous in their feeling about how
destructive and devastating these drugs are. This sends the wrong
message to young people about drug use."

InSite, which operates under a special exemption from a section of
the Canada Health Act that bans illegal drug consumption in
health-care facilities, will have to close up shop Sept. 12 if Ottawa
decides not to extend the pilot project.

Despite uncertainty over the future of InSite, the City of Victoria,
the Vancouver Island Health Authority and the University of Victoria
have joined forces on a safe-injection site study that will accompany
Victoria's application for a Health Canada exemption next spring.

Victoria police Chief Paul Battershill, a staunch advocate of the
harm-reduction approach in dealing with street level addiction
issues, said any such facility in Victoria would have to maintain a
sharp focus on all four harm reduction pillars.

"I have spoken to the police association representatives in regard to
the safe injection site issue. They are concerned that other pieces
such as prevention, education and treatment have not been proceeded
with and they question the value of a safe injection site without the
other pieces," Battershill said.

"I think we would try very hard here to ensure that the other
components are in place here in Victoria if we are successful with a
safe-injection site application."