BC DEBATES 'SHOOTING GALLERIES'

A proposal to set up four safe havens in which Vancouver's drug addicts can
give themselves injections is under fire from the B.C. government and the
city's mayor even before it is put to the vote by the local health authority.

The pressure to do something for or about the city's growing addict
population is prodding local officials to consider radical solutions, such
as government-sponsored "shooting galleries" and heroin-prescription programs.

Alarmed by the city's rate of overdose deaths, which the coroner's office
now puts at 153 for the first eight months of the year, the
Vancouver-Richmond Health Board will consider a proposal next Thursday to
establish safe injection sites in the Downtown Eastside, which has about
10,000 addicts.

The proposal, which would need approval from Ottawa and the province, calls
for sites with a coffee shop at the front and a back room with cubicles for
injection.

However, the proposal faces a wall of opposition from the B.C. Health
Ministry. "This government does not support shooting galleries," spokesman
Jeff Gaulin said in an interview yesterday. "The Health Ministry supports
treating addiction, not facilitating it."

Vancouver Mayor Phillip Owen vowed to block any such facility in the city,
saying: "The health board may think it's a good health policy but it would
be a bad neighbourhood policy."

Noting that no other city in Canada has such havens for drug users, Mr.
Owen said that by setting up such facilities Vancouver would send "a bad
signal to the rest of Canada: We give you free needles here and a free
place to shoot up, so why wouldn't anybody who is a drug addict in the rest
of Canada come here?"

Activists who work among drug users say, however, that the havens are one
of several measures, including clinical trials prescribing heroin to those
addicted to the drug, needed to deal with Vancouver's chronic drug problem.

In recent months, Vancouver has agonized over its drug problem. the mayor
has begun public consultations on six plans to deal with drug addiction,
crime and housing.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski