MAYOR SAYS LEGAL CRACK SMOKING ROOM IS NO PIPE DREAM

Despite opposition from the Vancouver Police Department, Mayor Larry
Campbell supports opening a room inside the city's legal injection site for
addicts to smoke rock cocaine.

Campbell told the Courier Wednesday he will speak to Health Canada next
month about getting the appropriate exemption to open a safe inhalation room.

"I'm completely for it," said Campbell, who is chair of the police board.
"We've already got the room there, it's set up, how much more does it take?"

Two weeks ago, the Rock Users Group, a branch of the Vancouver Area Network
of Drug Users, announced it wanted Insite-the current supervised drug
injection site on East Hastings-to provide a safe inhalation room in the
building.

In response, the police commander for the Downtown Eastside told the
Courier the group's request wasn't based on credible research proving
smoking crack in a government-approved site would benefit addicts.

Insp. Bob Rolls said an inhalation room would move criminal activity
indoors and create potential violent situations from addicts suffering from
cocaine psychosis.

The mayor, who was recently on holidays, said information from Europe and
Australia supports the merits of safe inhalation rooms.

He laughed when told of Rolls' comment regarding moving criminal activity
indoors, pointing out that addicts injecting heroin and cocaine at Insite
also moves criminal activity indoors.

"I don't think Bob thought that through, but obviously what we need to do
is bring scientific evidence together so that everybody is comfortable with
it," Campbell said. "I'm quite certain that if I spoke to the chief of
police [Jamie Graham] about this, that we would have them on board. It
certainly lessens their job."

When he visited Switzerland earlier this year, Campbell said he toured an
injection site that also had a room for crack smokers. Authorities there
told him the smoking site made sense and its clients hadn't caused problems.

"I sat in a room in Zurich and watched people smoking crack. It was calm.
The place was no different than the injection site."

Insite employs nurses and counsellors on staff to offer support for addicts
requiring medical attention and to help them break their addictions.
Campbell said he would like to see the same attention paid to crack
smokers, despite Rolls' concerns about cocaine psychosis and violence.

Health care providers on site could diagnose a psychosis, he said, noting
"any time you can get people off the streets and into a place where you can
get contact with professionals, it's a positive."

Crack addict Rob Morgan, who belongs to the Rock Users Group, said he was
encouraged by the mayor's comments.

"It's great news, I'm going to have to talk to him about this," Morgan said.

Morgan used a megaphone Tuesday in a rally along East Hastings to alert
those attending about the needs of crack smokers. Addicts are met with
violence in alleys and suffer from lung-related ailments from inhaling the
chemicals contained in crude pipe screens, he said.

"We've got to make this happen."

His group also wants to distribute "crack kits" to addicts. The kits would
include one Pyrex pipe, five brass screens, polypropylene mouth pieces,
Vaseline, condoms and harm reduction reading material.

To open a room for crack smokers, the Vancouver Coastal Health
Authority-which operates Insite in conjunction with the PHS Community
Services Society-would have to apply to Health Canada for an exemption.

Clay Adams, spokesman for the health authority, told the Courier two weeks
ago that there are no plans to lobby Health Canada to open a safe
inhalation room.

Next month marks the first anniversary of Insite, a facility Campbell
promised would be open-if he got elected-when he campaigned for mayor two
years ago.

"Crack" is the street name given to cocaine processed from cocaine
hydrochloride to a free base for smoking. The term "crack" refers to the
crackling sound heard when the mixture is heated.

Common street terminology for crack cocaine is "rock" referring to the
pellets of crack (as opposed to a powder.) Smoking crack delivers extremely
high doses of cocaine to the brain very quickly and brings an intense and
immediate high.

In a Vancouver study involving more than 1,400 injection drug users between
May 1996 and December 2000, frequent crack use, defined as weekly or
greater, increased from 18 per cent to 40 per cent between 1997 and 2000
among drug users in the city.

The study revealed crack use was more common among women than men (42 per
cent versus 30 per cent), those who had unstable housing (71 per cent vs 45
per cent), and those who were HIV positive at the time of the study (28 per
cent versus 20 per cent).

Among women, those who were involved in the sex trade were more likely to
use crack, which sells for $10 a rock in the Downtown Eastside.