COP UNION BOSS QUESTIONS INJECTION SITE IMPACT

The city's 14-month-old supervised injection site on East Hastings has not
reduced drug use or harm from drugs the way bureaucrats and politicians
said it would, says the president of the Vancouver Police Union.

Tom Stamatakis said the increase in overdose deaths this year points to an
increasing problem with drug use in the city and the need to focus more on
drug enforcement, education and treatment.

The Courier reported last week that 44 people died of drug overdoses from
January to September, an increase from the 41 who died in the same period
in 2003.

"The numbers suggest to me that, quite frankly, the safe injection site
really hasn't had an impact on drug overdose deaths, or the use of IV drugs
in this area," Stamatakis said.

The Insite supervised injection site has operated at 139 East Hastings
since September 2003. Its opening came one year after incoming Mayor Larry
Campbell campaigned to open the site in Vancouver.

Campbell and Donald Macpherson, the city's drug policy coordinator, argued
an injection site would help reduce the number of blood-borne diseases,
give addicts access to counselling and, ultimately, save lives.

Macpherson told the Courier last week that Insite is a "rather small
intervention into a very large problem"-a comment Stamatakis believes
softens the drug policy coordinator's earlier pronouncements about the
injection site's worth.

"A lot of people, including [Donald Macpherson], early on made it sound
like the safe injection site was going to somehow have a tremendous impact
on the drug issue in the Downtown Eastside, and I just don't think there's
any evidence there," he said.

Macpherson, the mayor and operators of Insite, including the PHS Community
Services Society and the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, have pointed
to a recent evaluation of the site for proof of the site's success.

The evaluation, conducted by the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS,
revealed that while 100 addicts overdosed at the site, only one required CPR.

The report also said more than 3,000 people injected drugs at Insite since
it opened. Attendance, the authors said, has been consistently high, with
visiting users making an average of nearly 600 injections per day.

In August, the site recorded 14,288 injections by 1,312 persons, for an
average of 10.9 injections per person, who are mainly using heroin and cocaine.

A "large number" of referrals made to addiction counselling and withdrawal
management services have also been made by counsellors at Insite, the
evaluation said.

Stamatakis said he hasn't read the evaluation, but noted evidence of
whether the site is working is outside his office door, near Main and Hastings.

"The fact is, every day I see it, and my [police] members talk to me about
it all the time. We are still coming across addicted people injecting in
alleys, alcoves, hotel rooms, hotel hallways. I'm all for trying something
different... but I think it's a mistake to hold something out as if it's
going to solve everybody's problem."

The authors of the evaluation said that "efforts to document the health
outcomes associated with the site are ongoing" and will be available
throughout the three-year evaluation period and beyond.

The Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, which operates Insite with the PHS
Community Services Society, spent $1.4 million to run Insite for the year.
The provincial government also spent $1.2 million building the site.