INSIDE INSITE

The Author Pays a Visit to Vancouver's Supervised Safe Injection Site
in Search of a Fresh Perception of This Misunderstood Issue

There are some strong opinions out there about Insite, Canada's only
supervised site for substance abuse victims to inject themselves with
illegal narcotics. On the previous weekend, I'd attended a huge block
party rally for Insite on Carrall Street that shut down traffic for
hours with live bands, stilt walkers and a free BBQ.

The enforcement pillar of the drug industry, the police departments,
lobbies the governments to shut down the facility. The whole project
has survived on six month exemptions to Canada's drug laws, leaving
staff and clients not knowing how long the site will last.
Vancouver's Mayor Sam Sullivan makes statements on both sides of this
fence and has even stated that Insite might make the transition to
distributing drugs.

I decided to see for myself what Insite is like from the clients'
point of view. So on a rainy Tuesday afternoon, I headed down
Hastings Street from Main and entered Insite's frosted door bedecked
with stylized needle logo and window, all set about with dark green trim.

Sickened people sway back and forth, leaning on shopping carts. It
smells like industrial cleaner. The room inside the door is like a
coat check room for shopping carts-all the worldly possessions of
perhaps a dozen people. A man at a desk asks my name. "Ever been here
before?" he asks. "No," I say.

A lady with a clipboard is assigned to give me an orientation. She
makes it very clear that nothing must exchange hands in the building.
Also, no one can help me inject drugs into myself. They give me a
syringe, alcohol swabs, a little metal bowl, and water in tiny blue
plastic containers.

The next room is like collaboration between William S Burroughs and H
R Geiger. Seats face into stainless steel cubicles built out of the
mirrored wall. It's very bright. A lady at the end spurts blood out
of her arm all over her cubicle. There is a big man there whose job
it is to watch the injection room, and he wipes up the blood and
gives the lady a band-aid.

The glare is so strong it makes you blink at your reflection, which
distorts as the drugs take effect or wear off or not work. Research
in the downtown eastside shows cocaine use to be as low as 10% and
the rest of the drug use to be amphetamine or other chemicals that
produce a rush similar to inhalants. The people doing this sort of
drug twitch and fiddle with their needles. They are in agony. Once
one has been trapped into slavery to this drug there is often nothing
left but an all-consuming need for more. These addicts clearly hate
the substances they crave. The spastic fidgeting makes them look like
poisoned bugs.

Two chairs over from me is an old man, presentably dressed. He's on
heroin, the other drug. He nods slowly, slouching down in the relief
of fixing. Heroin hurts when you don't have it, but now that the old
man has had it he seems almost okay. His eyes roll up slightly and he
says something about not being allowed to shake hands.

We are ushered out into the next room, a "chill out room." A man
behind a counter hands out styrofoam cups of what looks like soup. On
the street outside the green door a police car pulls up next to a
cluster of people sheltering from the rain. The police squawk their
siren and the crowd quickly disperse. Around the corner, in Blood
Alley, people sprawl out in the muck. A woman fills her syringe from
a puddle. Others sift through the sludgy buildup everywhere in hopes
of finding lost drugs. One woman is particularly spastic, and a tall
Jamaican man walking past says to her, "You have to slow down!

You're going to kill yourself if you don't slow down. Or go to Insite!"

"Go to Insite!" echoes someone else. It's impossible to tell if the
woman hears them.

In the National Post story "Four Blocks of Hell," and in nearly all
the coverage of downtown eastside drug epidemics, the dealers are
said to be plying their wares in plain sight, but this is not the
reality. It is true that you can see drugs being sold, but this is an
industry where the retail level customers serve themselves and the
real dealers drive Mercedes. The drug industries, both the illicit
one and big pharmaceutical businesses, are trillion-dollar
industries. We are meant to believe that an industry this size can be
conducted by bike gangs and a few dirty businessmen.

There is a macroeconomic level to this phenomenon and at this level
all industries are inextricably linked, from tourism to energy to
security. How many degrees away are the real dealers from our elected
officials? Both Vancouver and British Columbia have been purchasing
rooming houses at way over the assessed value and thereby
contributing to real estate hysteria, while giving millions of tax
dollars to several companies known to be associated with narcotics
distribution.

Crystal meth labs are found in $10 million homes in Jericho Beach.
Look to the Four Seasons Hotel for the real dealers, who are there to
listen to MLA Lorne Mayencourt present his plan to build forced
labour camps for substance abuse victims to detox them in rural
environments. The higher we go, the closer to reality we seem to get,
until it starts making more sense to believe what the police
originally said when they raided the BC Legislature Building, that
they were investigating a drug-trafficking ring. Police later said
that they covered up information because it "made the government look
bad." We'd be better to look for truth not in the Basi-Virk trial
that has resulted from the unprecedented legislative office raid, but
perhaps in the National Film Board production "Citizen Sam", in which
Mayor Sam Sullivan defends having bought crack for a kid to smoke in
his van so he, as a concerned leader, could watch the effects.

"Give out free drugs," Sam jokes in the film, "that's how to get the
homeless vote." Is this reality? Is the state and financial powers
conspiring to suck profits out of a plague whose victims litter the
streets? If this is the case, then what can anyone do beyond damage
control, or harm reduction? God damn the pusher man!