NEEDLE STILL TAKING FEARFUL TOLL

One hundred and forty seven people died of overdose drug deaths in
Vancouver since the city's supervised injection site opened in
September 2003.

The deaths occurred between October 2003 and July 2006, according to
statistics from the B.C. Coroners Service. The statistics do not
indicate the type of drug used or in which area of the city the person
died.

Though the number of deaths is significant, the city's drug policy
coordinator said the figure should be put into context.

City drug policy coordinator Donald MacPherson noted there were years
in the 1990s where the city saw 150 drug deaths per year. He pointed
out one injection site could not possibly reduce deaths to zero in the
city.

"If we have five or six injection sites and we were covering many,
many more injections, then you might be able to have that argument
[that the site isn't working]," MacPherson said. "The injection site
is a very small intervention into a very large population of injection
drug users."

MacPherson noted that nobody has died of an overdose at Insite,
located at 139 East Hastings.

Since Insite opened in September 2003 as a three-year scientific
experiment, a core group of 1,000 addicts is responsible for an
average of 600 injections per day at the facility.

Depending on the latest figures available, operators of the site have
said over recent months that anywhere from 336 to 450 people have
"overdosed" at the site.

A community activist group called Insite for Community Safety recently
formed to lobby the federal Conservative government to extend Insite's
operating licence. The group symbolized the statistics this summer by
placing hundreds of crosses in the ground at Vanier Park. It also
protested at the recent international AIDS conference in Toronto.

Gillian Maxwell, spokesperson for the group, has acknowledged that
overdoses reported at the injection site ranged from an addict
requiring oxygen to paramedics rushing an addict to hospital.

Though the Vancouver Police Department is on record as supporting
Insite-Police Chief Jamie Graham has written a letter to Health Canada
supporting it-some police officers don't support the site.

Since Insite opened, several officers from the department have told
the Courier in off-the-record conversations that supervised injection
sites encourage more drug use.

One senior officer also questioned the fact the B.C. Centre for
Excellence in HIV/AIDS is conducting evaluations of Insite for Health
Canada.

He pointed out the B.C. Centre has been critical of police crackdowns
in the Downtown Eastside, arguing that addicts would be afraid to
travel to Insite.

This would lead to needle sharing and shooting alone in alleys and
hotels, where no medical professionals would be available to prevent
an overdose, the B.C. Centre has argued.

The Courier left a message for Dr. Thomas Kerr of the B.C. Centre
Monday but had not received a return call before yesterday's deadline.

MacPherson is aware the entire police department doesn't support the
facility and was quick to defend the B.C. Centre's evaluations of Insite.

"As Thomas Kerr said, 'They should take that up with the editorial
board of the New England Journal of Medicine.' I mean these are
peer-reviewed studies and if they're making the Lancet and the New
England Journal of Medicine, there's something to them."

As for the B.C. Centre's criticism of police crackdowns, MacPherson
said the centre's interest is in protecting people from contracting
communicable diseases "and crackdowns have been shown to put people at
greater risk."

Insite's operating licence with the federal government expires Sept.
12. The government is expected to make an announcement on the
facility's future within two weeks.