B.C. DRUG USERS TO HELP ADDICTS INJECT THEMSELVES

VANCOUVER -- Addicts, crippled and blinded by their drug use and too sick to
shoot themselves up, will be helped by a volunteer team of users to get high
safely.

Forty members of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users will be patrolling
the Downtown Eastside, a slum and open drug market that teems with disease,
offering injection education and assistance.

"Most of the stats show people who are incapable of injecting themselves or
have a hard time have the highest rate of HIV," said Diane Tobin, the new
and first female president of the users' harm reduction group.

VANDU, which is wholly run by volunteers, has 12 members trained and walking
the alleys now. Tobin said they hope to get a room where people can also
come to them.

"There's a huge need out there," said Tobin, who is back on heroin to deal
with withdrawal from methadone.

"A lot of people can't inject because of blindness, injury, stroke. They're
still heroin addicts. They're at the mercy of anybody and a lot of the time
they don't use clean needles. It's whatever's in their pockets."

The problem of assisted injection has been highlighted in a recent report
from the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS that shows people who need
help injecting illicit drugs are twice as likely to become HIV infected.

Women and young injectors are also more likely than other injection drug
users to need help injecting.

Health Canada is calling for a change to the law that prevents peers and
nurses in the city's sanctioned safe injection site from helping people
inject.

Health care workers can only supervise and offer medical assistance if a
user hurts themselves and gets sick or overdoses.

If nurses help an addict shoot up, they could be charged with possession or
trafficking.

"We need them to help," said Tobin.

"And we need more places like the safe injection site. It's so busy now,
it's being used all the time and people are sitting on the street, getting
people who don't know what they're doing to inject them."

VANDU is also busy coping with the hot heroin going around the Downtown
Eastside.

It has been blamed for a recent cluster of nine overdoses.

Tobin is trying to spread the word to users to taste their drugs first.

"Good heroin has a bitter taste. The bad stuff has a more chemical taste. Do
it with a friend and help each other. Don't do it alone," she said.

Police said they are now wondering whether some of what people are calling
"hot heroin" is actually methadone stolen from a Vancouver Downtown Eastside
pharmacy.

Vancouver police spokesman Const. Howard Chow said overdosing could be
caused if people are buying methadone believing it's heroin and using it as
such.

Methadone is a prescription narcotic given to addicts to help them kick
heroin.

Further tests will be done to see if other drugs were responsible for the
deaths and police noted the victims may have thought the drug cocktail they
were buying was heroin.