SUPPORT FOR INSITE WIDESPREAD

The organization that runs Vancouver's supervised injection site says
it has spent about $60,000 so far in its campaign to convince the
federal government to extend the life of the project beyond the Sept.
12 deadline.

Just about everyone-former city mayors, ethicists, drug and disease
specialists and the local cops-have come out in support of the project.

The most notable exception is the RCMP. In spite of two reports it
commissioned which view the impact of the injection site favourably,
the horsemen are holding back. They have been longtime supporters of
the failed American War on Drugs and are not about to let good science
get in the way of old-fashioned ideology.

But obviously they are feeling the heat. The RCMP spokesman in B.C.,
Staff Sgt. John Ward, had his chain jerked by his bosses in Ottawa
Wednesday morning. Now all queries about the RCMP position are sent
off to national headquarters.

The Portland Hotel Society, which runs the site, has been putting its
money where its mouth is. According to the society's senior staffer,
Mark Townsend, that $60,000 does not include the hundred if not
thousands of staff hours put into the campaign.

Then there are the small army of volunteers and concerned citizens,
including Gillian Maxwell who has been the campaign spokeswoman for
the past several months.

The biggest chunk of Portland dough went to Reputations, Mayor Sam
Sullivan's favourite PR firm. Among other things it has organized
press conferences of the projects supporters. They also created a
website at www.communityinsite.ca that back's Maxwell's work by
setting out both an archive of news coverage and a listing of all the
scientific reports completed over the past three years.

And the strategy to get the federal government's attention has not
been limited to Vancouver. The campaign has also tried to get the
eastern media interested as one more route to Prime Minister Stephen
Harper and his cabinet.

A couple of weeks ago during the international conference on HIV/AIDS
in Toronto, Townsend and a few hundred friends organized a brief
traffic jam in the heart of the city, waving banners and handing out
20,000 leaflets.

The lack of response from Ottawa is remarkable. Even Harper's
favourite turncoat, Vancouver-Kingsway MP David Emerson, backs the
continued use of the site. It has, arguably, succeeded on every
score-reducing street disorder, reducing the spread of disease, saving
lives that could have been lost to overdoses and directing people
toward recovery programs.

Meeting requests with Harper and the minister of health have been
turned down, as have offers to tour the injection site. At the
HIV/AIDS conference, which Harper refused to attend, it seemed as if
Health Minister Tony Clement was playing a game of hide and seek with
the folks from the Portland Hotel.

With little more than a week to go before the deadline, theories about
what Harper will do are as common as Vancouver crack addicts. And
dates as to when he will make his decision known include even today,
Sept. 1.

He could reject a renewal outright, but that seems inconceivable given
the human misery that would cause. He could approve the site for a
period long enough to get him past the next election. Or he could
approve the site but cancel $1.5 million in federal money that funds
the research and download the cost to the province. (The research
satisfied international treaties on heroin control. The site is
considered a scientific experiment and not a permanent
institution.)

But even if, in the end, the site is allowed to continue on, the sad
point of all is that both the money and time spent on this campaign
would have been far better spent dealing with the problems caused by
drug addiction.