COLLATERAL DAMAGE OF A DRUG WAR

When it comes to the "war on drugs," Canada's stance is not unlike its
position on the war in Iraq: We're not the United States. Our government
supports needle exchange, has recommended the legalization of marijuana, and
is allowing the first trial use of prescription heroin in North America.

So when I moved from Toronto last year to work for Human Rights Watch in New
York, the last thing I expected was to be reporting on Canada's abuse of
drug users.

That was before April 7, which marked the beginning of the Vancouver police
department's "citywide enforcement team," a three-month campaign to rid the
streets of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside of drug traffickers and "restore
order to a community in distress." In practice, this has meant a severe
crackdown against drug users, not drug traffickers.

Visiting Vancouver recently, a colleague and I documented instances of
excessive use of force, illegal search and seizure, and harassment of people
never charged with dealing drugs. We saw an African Canadian man
strip-searched in a busy street while he vomited from the police's pepper
spray. We saw officers on horseback search the possessions of people who
were never told why they'd been stopped.

Police crackdowns can drive drug users away from life-saving outreach
services, increase overdose deaths, and even ignite turf wars among drug
traffickers. That's why the city elected Mayor Larry Campbell, an ex-coroner
who promised to fight illegal drug use with the "four pillars" of treatment,
prevention, law enforcement, and harm reduction.

Harm reduction means things like needle exchange and "safe injection sites"
- -- places where drug users can inject under the supervision of trained
medical personnel, rather than in the alleys of the Downtown Eastside.
During the election, Mr. Campbell promised that a safe injection site would
open by January. Today, frustrated activists are running an illegal site,
while the proposed official site remains locked. Outside, police patrol the
streets in triple the numbers of their ordinary force.

Mr. Campbell says it doesn't matter which pillar you start with, as long as
you implement them all. But unleashing law enforcement without guaranteeing
access to harm-reduction services can be fatal. Needle exchange is proven to
reduce HIV infection among drug users without increasing drug use or
drug-related crime.

Vancouver exchangers say that since the beginning of the police crackdown,
they have distributed only a fraction of their usual number of sterile
syringes. Fearing arrest, injectors stay away from exchange points; needles
they do turn in have been reused so many times, the numbers have worn off.

Vancouver suffers from what may be North America's worst HIV/AIDS epidemic.
As many as 40 per cent of the Downtown Eastside's 5,000 drug users are
HIV-positive.

One police commander told me that AIDS activists should care more about the
safety of the area's other residents. But AIDS activists pick up used
syringes, find shelter for people with AIDS, and provide testing and
counselling. They teach the public about infectious disease, patrol alleys
to ensure people aren't overdosing, and exchange syringes in areas where no
health-care worker would dare venture.

All of these services are being interrupted during the current police
campaign. AIDS activists aren't telling the police not to do their job. They
just want to do their own.