U.K. DRUG JOURNAL FOCUSES ON POLICIES USED IN VANCOUVER

City's Approach A Model, Editor Says

VANCOUVER -- Vancouver is a model for cities looking to find ways of
dealing with drug problems, the editor of a British drug policy
journal says.

This month's edition of the International Journal of Drug Policy is
devoted to research and opinion articles that examine Vancouver's
policies at the city level, its editor, Gerry Stimson said.

"Vancouver is very special in many ways with respect to the way it's
trying to reduce harms with respect to injection drug use, disease and
a whole range of issues," he said by cellphone from Spain.

"People in Holland and Switzerland might chuckle that we're doing this
- -- they're way ahead," he said. "But internationally, people are
looking to and commenting on Vancouver."

Although the journal has run special editions on such issues as opium
production in Afghanistan, this month's issue -- put on-line this week
by publishing giant Elsevier --is the first to focus on a single city,
which he said is the level of government best suited to deal with drug
problems.

"You've got a huge concentration of drug problems in a small space,"
Mr. Stimson said. "You're battling against quite tall odds."

Paper copies of the journal will be distributed when Vancouver
welcomes delegates from more than 70 countries to the International
Conference on the Reduction of Drug-Related Harm, beginning April 30.

The Downtown Eastside, long known as the poorest postal code in
Canada, has always been home to a concentration of the country's
heroin users, but after a rash of overdose deaths in the early 1990s
and a sudden rise in HIV infections, the city faced a health crisis,
the journal's special issue recounts.

Then-mayor Philip Owen released the four pillars drug strategy in
2000, stressing harm reduction, enforcement, prevention and treatment.

Mayor Larry Campbell was swept to office on promises to implement the
strategy and open Canada's first supervised injection site.

"Our theme is: What do you do when you hit rock bottom?" said Dr. Evan
Wood, a member of the faculty of medicine at the University of British
Columbia, who guest edited the issue along with Thomas Kerr, of the
B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS.

One of the issue's messages is that the four pillars strategy was
fashioned through politics, not science, Dr. Wood said.

"The four pillars is such a leap in the right direction, and it
brought everyone to the table," he said. "But it's a political plan,
meant to appease stakeholders, not a scientific plan."

With the supervised injection site coming up for review by the federal
government in September, much of the research into how the site has
helped addicts while leaving the surrounding community unchanged has
been completed, he said.

That's a new opportunity to use the research to fine-tune policy on
what has traditionally been a very divisive issue, he added.

In 2003, Vancouver adopted a new plan for prevention that drew on
international research to conclude that the drive to use psychoactive
drugs was natural. The plan would use a range of tools, including
education, to target the use that is problematic, Donald MacPherson,
Vancouver's drug policy co-ordinator, writes in the issue.

"A new mayor and council have been elected, and will be faced with the
significant challenge of implementing this prevention plan for
Vancouver," he said.

Kash Heed, once the head of vice and drugs for Vancouver Police in the
Downtown Eastside, writes that police have difficulty liberalizing
their approach to drugs, in part because of the risk of being cast as
favouring drug use.

"I am frustrated by fighting what I see as an unwinnable battle," he
writes, adding that police should focus on fighting the public
disorder associated with open-air drug use, and conserve resources by
being able to forward addicts directly to detox centres.