SULLIVAN TO DISCUSS DRUGS WITH HARPER

Vancouver East NDP MP Libby Davies is urging Mayor Sam Sullivan to
defend the future of the city's supervised injection site when he
meets with Prime Minister Stephen Harper next week.

The three-year pilot project, which began in September 2003, is set
to end this September. To keep Insite operating, Health Minister Tony
Clement would have to approve an exemption under the country's drug laws.

Sullivan will meet with Harper in Ottawa April 25.

"He's got to defend the injection site," Davies told the Courier.
"Sam, I believe, knows how important it is. He's been quite
supportive on this whole issue. He is the mayor of Vancouver, he's
got to defend it. He'll have lots of support if he does."

Harper, while campaigning in the winter election, told reporters in
Vancouver that he wouldn't allow taxpayers' money to fund drug use.
That comment has people worried about Insite's future, Davies said.

"I would see it as a very ideological decision if they shut it down
because the Conservatives have a different view of how they respond
to the drug approach. It's a much more law and order approach."

Sullivan said he will talk about drug addiction with Harper. When
asked if he would specifically discuss the future of Insite, Sullivan
said it was a possibility. "It might come up. It's probably wise to
have some discussion about that."

When he was a city councillor, Sullivan voted in favour of Insite on
East Hastings. But he also told the Courier when he was a councillor
that the federal government should ditch the city's heroin
maintenance trials and simply start prescribing the drug to addicts
throughout the city.

The sooner the government dispensed heroin, the sooner crime such as
break-ins caused by addicts would decrease in Vancouver, said
Sullivan, who wants more treatment facilities.

"I don't believe the safe injection site is the answer," he said
Monday. "It is one answer of many along the way. It's not my focus."

The "answers," he said, should come from experts in the drug field.

"The citizens and the politicians should be able to define where we
want to go. As to how we get there, that's the job of the technical
experts. One of the real big problems and the reasons we have not
been able to address this problem and solve it is because we keep
letting people who really don't have a lot of knowledge and expertise
in this area define how it's going to be done."

Sullivan didn't name any names, but when told Vancouver-Burrard
Liberal MLA Lorne Mayencourt didn't want Insite to operate beyond
September, the mayor said personal opinions didn't hold a lot of
weight with him when discussing a scientific project.

"I want to rely on evidence, research and science, and less on
personal opinion," he said, noting the evaluations he's read prove
Insite is working. "All in all, the situation is better with it than
without it."

Mayencourt, however, said his reading of various evaluations of
Insite at 137 East Hastings show the facility is not getting people
off drugs or reducing the number of HIV-AIDS cases in Vancouver.

"I'm not really a big fan of the injection site," he said. "The
information that comes out of there is spotty at best, and is not
really consistent with what I hear from drug addicts in the Downtown
Eastside, which is that it's a joke."

Mayencourt didn't have statistics immediately available to back up
his beliefs on the injection site, but pointed out the open drug
trade is worse than it ever was.

He praised the Vancouver police's recent action to arrest addicts who
inject or smoke crack cocaine in public. Enforcement is one of the
pillars of the city's four pillars drug strategy. The others are harm
reduction, prevention and treatment.

"I'm going to get in big trouble for talking to you about this
because my constituents will think I'm not supportive of the four
pillars. In fact, I really am," Mayencourt said.

The focus should be on adding treatment facilities. And more
attention should be paid to non-addicts affected by drug use and drug
sales in their neighbourhoods, such as the West End and the Downtown
Eastside, he added.

A one-year evaluation of Insite conducted by the B.C. Centre of
Excellence in HIV/AIDS revealed that while 100 addicts overdosed at
the site, only one required CPR. Attendance at Insite had been
consistently high, the report said, with visiting users making an
average of nearly 600 injections per day.