DRUG USERS BACK PROPOSED NEEDLE EXCHANGE

A group representing intravenous drug users in Victoria is throwing
its support behind the proposed site for a permanent new needle
exchange, weeks after suggesting the Princess Avenue location was
inappropriate.

Bruce Wallace, an advisory board member of SOLID -- Society of Living
Intravenous Drug Users --said yesterday that backing the Princess
Avenue location is the only way to ensure Victoria will have a
fixed-site needle exchange running by winter.

"To get a site up as soon as possible, this is what we're going to
have to do," he said.

The group met with officials from the Vancouver Island Health
Authority to underscore the importance of involving drug users in
planning the new site, he said.

"We're very much committed to working with VIHA on that site and to
make sure peers are involved in the establishment and some of the
service delivery."

VIHA spokeswoman Shannon Marshall confirmed many of SOLID's concerns
were addressed in a face-to-face meeting with health authority
officials in early August and welcomed the group's support.

But she added the undisclosed location on Princess Avenue still needs
to meet criteria set by the city's Needle Exchange Advisory Committee.

"There's still a lot of work to be done before that proposal is
finalized, but we are hoping this is a viable location and that we
will be able to site a fixed-site needle exchange before the winter,"
she said.

Late last month, SOLID sent a letter to VIHA rejecting the proposed
site on Princess Avenue between Douglas and Blanshard streets -- just
south of the Bay Street Armoury -- on the grounds it's located too far
from the downtown core in an area known to drug users as "extremely
dangerous and violent."

SOLID members would still prefer a downtown location, but Wallace said
yesterday the proposed site is better than none at all.

"We're realizing that there's one site proposed and after more than a
year, we need to get behind the one that's chosen," he said.

A needle exchange on Cormorant Street closed in May 2008. The site ran
for about six years before being evicted by the landlord after
complaints from neighbours about people loitering and leaving behind
needles, condoms and human excrement.

The advisory committee, made up of representatives of the city,
police, downtown residents, businesses and VIHA, among others, has
been working to find a new site.

SOLID formally withdrew from the committee in June, however, saying in
a letter that the views of drug users were not being heard.

"We feel silenced by the inequities in a group that over-represents
the views of people whose lives are not at stake and where we are not
able to represent our views," the letter said.

"If the committee had represented our interests fairly, we would have
already have moved ahead with a well-situated, fixed-site needle exchange."

Wallace said re-establishing a fixed needle-exchange service in the
city is the first step toward a comprehensive harm-reduction strategy
that could eventually include multiple venues for needle distribution.