SUPERVISED INJECTION SITE MODEL PRESENTED TO PUBLIC

Victoria's intravenous drug problem is complex - as complex as
Vancouver's but on a different scale, experts agree.

Whether a safe-injection site for the capital city is an appropriate
strategy remains an open question, participants at a City Hall public
forum heard last week.

"I look at this much like prescribing medications," said Dr. Richard
Stanwick, chief medical health officer for the Vancouver Island Health
Authority. "You're not going to promote this widely unless you know
that it works."

At the forum, residents and business people - at least those who care
enough to want to contribute to some solutions - heard about the
challenges and fights people in Vancouver went through in engineering
the opening of a safe injection site, Insite.

They listened to people such as Insite manager Chris Buchner tell how
the number of junkies shooting up in alleyways - using murky water to
mix with their drugs and inject into their often uncooperative veins -
had been greatly reduced and how more people were being directed to
the appropriate services.

While Victoria has no Downtown East Side acting as a magnet for drug
problems, Mayor Alan Lowe spelled out evidence of the need to tackle
the problems before they become unmanageable.

"Our reserve police constables pick up 75 to 200 (needle) rigs in one
four-hour shift on a Saturday night," he said, adding that AIDS
Vancouver Island exchanges 5,000 needles per month.

He said the evening's public forum, along with a previous one held
several weeks earlier, was just the start to the community dialogue on
the topic. Lowe added he was pleased with the tone of the discussions
and was encouraged that the downtown action committee, a joint project
of the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce and social service
providers, was setting new goals to determine the next steps to take
in addressing the situation.

One man who works with the Greater Victoria Cool-Aid Society's
outreach program talked about how the drug problem was moving inside.
Since police have stepped up patrol of downtown trouble spots, dealers
and users have become more creative and are doing deals inside
apartment buildings, he said.

Lowe later noted that unlike Vancouver, where the four-pillars drug
strategy includes harm reduction, prevention, treatment and
enforcement, Victoria's four pillars are education, enforcement,
treatment and a housing strategy to get addicted people into a
healthier environment.

Responding to questions about whether a safe injection site is the
answer for Victoria, local representatives on the panel said the
process is still in its infancy.

When someone asked what the cost of such a facility might be, Stanwick
phrased his answer in terms of the traditional health care system. He
said a hospital bill for an addict whose health is extremely
compromised, such someone with HIV-AIDS or Hepatitis C, can run
between $50,000 and $100,000.

Stanwick added that the European model of harm reduction has found
that people with a stable place to inject their drugs tend to be
healthier and not as reliant on the traditional health-care system.

James Tigchelaar of the B.C. Centre for Disease Control offered a
financial argument for the idea of a supervised injection site. "By
participating and cooperating and looking at a different model, I
believe it's money well spent," he said.

Buchner said that on a recent trip to Europe, a police chief in
Switzerland told him that making heroin available through a
government-approved source had reduced drug-related property crime by
80 per cent.

Each of the guests from Vancouver gave a brief presentation on their
experience with getting Insite up and running. Each had valuable
insights into the process.

Asked about the idea of locating a safe injection site outside of the
downtown core, Vancouver city staffer Wendy Au told of a trip to
Portland, where money was raised and a facility built on the outskirts
of town.

"Nobody used it," she said. "Drug users are not going to go a long way
to use the services."

Vancouver police Sgt. Scott Thompson said the department noticed a
"miraculous" phenomenon after the safe injection site opened.

Given a fairly loose, discretion-based set of instructions about how
to interact with addicts and the site, officers began directing users
to the site in substantial numbers and even driving them there,
Thompson said.

One Quadra Street resident admitted that Victoria's intravenous drug
problem needs to be addressed. He also complained that a friend trying
to sell a condo near the AIDS Vancouver Island office and the needle
exchange had seen his property value plummet.

Panel moderator Miki Hansen of AIDS Vancouver Island wondered aloud
how much the proximity of the exchange had to do with the ability of
selling the condo.

Later, however, she praised the man for acknowledging that there is a
problem that needs addressing.

Buchner threw cold water on a related notion that safe injection sites
attract drug dealers who know that users are nearby.

"The honey pot effect is around where the dealers are, not where the
social services are," he said.

Buchner clarified that the Vancouver site is not simply a
health-services facility. Under the legislation that allowed it to
open, it must conduct scientific research, he said.

One of the ongoing activities in the operation of the site is the
collection of data on about 1,000 regular users of the facility. The
initial intake information, due to be published in a report this
summer, will catalogue the number of people using the facility, what
they are using, and whether they are directed to other services such
as counselling, detox or medical treatment.

The research also includes a cost-benefit analysis of the operation, a
logical step if it expects to receive any provincial money to continue
operating, Buchner noted.

Lowe said he looked forward to seeing the results of the study, which
could well set the tone for the next set of meetings about a Victoria
supervised injection site.