DRUG USE AROUND CITY

To the editor:

On May 2, 3 and 4 the movie FIX: The Story of an Addicted City, was shown at
the Paramount Theatre. After seven of the showings, there were community
forums where the public had the opportunity to address questions to street
nurses, front-line workers, recovering and ex-addicts, a physician and
community service managers who all volunteered their time.

One point that was made clear in the forums is that Kelowna already has
injection sites. Despite the opponents to harm reduction, these sites exist
and are unsafe for the community as the drug paraphernalia is left at the
sites for children to find. It is unsafe for addicts, as they cannot get
help at these sites to enter detox or recovery programs or to get medical
attention in the event of an overdose. These injections sites are City Park,
the old KSS site, any of the downtown alleys between the lake and Gordon
Drive, the five-block radius around the intersection of Hwy 33 and Hwy 97,
and every public access to the lakeshore.

To the opponents of safe injection sites, I can only surmise that you would
prefer the unsafe sites as they exist today which place all members of our
population at risk. The alternative to safe injection sites is to ensure
funding for detox on demand, treatment on demand and extensive resources for
continuous, daily follow-up and support for five years after recovering
addicts are released from treatment centres.

Whether or not we have safe injection sites in the city we also need to
ensure that Kelowna has physicians who will manage a methadone clinic, and
to increase the availability of the needle exchange from 17 hours per week
to 84 hours per week. The only way that anything will be accomplished is for
concerned citizens to contact the mayor and city council members to find out
what they are planning to do about the situation, if anything.

Brian Mairs, program coordinator,

Okanagan Aboriginal AIDS Society