SHOOTING HEROIN, IN A VANCOUVER STOREFRONT

Activists Launch Illegal Safe-Injection Site in the City's Downtown Eastside

VANCOUVER -- On a warm spring afternoon last week, Norman Brixher
walked into a storefront shop in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside with a
packet of heroin, rifled through a tray of clean syringes, then
selected one to help push the drug into a vein in his left arm.

As reporters looked on and cameras zoomed in to record the moment,
relief spread over Mr. Brixher's face as the drug took effect. He
mumbled that he hoped a judge he knew didn't watch the news that night
and revoke his bail.

"He'll have to understand," Mr. Brixher said. "I'm just a user."

Nearby, a registered nurse hovered, watching the addict for signs of
an overdose.

Mr. Brixher was at Vancouver's only safe-injection site, the name
given to a place where addicts can use drugs in a supervised,
sterilized setting. Health-care workers, activists and, most
prominently, the mayor of Vancouver, have extolled the benefits of
such sites, saying they save lives by providing an alternative to
dirty back alleys and solitary hotel rooms.

The only problem with Vancouver's new haven for addicts is that it's
illegal. While common in several northern European cities,
safe-injection sites where addicts can use illegal drugs without the
threat of arrest have yet to be sanctioned in North America.

The storefront operation where Mr. Brixher used heroin last week was
opened by a band of militant health and poverty activists who say
they're frustrated with the delays for a legal site, which Mayor Larry
Campbell promised in last fall's civic election campaign.

Mr. Campbell, a former coroner and narcotics police officer who won in
a landslide, vowed Vancouver would have Canada's first-ever legal
injection site by early 2003.

It was the centrepiece of Mr. Campbell's promise of a new approach to
the city's notorious drug problem: treating the drug scourge as
primarily a health concern, not a criminal issue.

Now, nearly five months after taking office, Mr. Campbell's promised
legal site still awaits approval from Ottawa.

In fact, while Vancouver activists were summoning reporters to the
illegal site, Mr. Campbell was in Ottawa meeting with officials from
Health Canada and Solicitor-General Wayne Easter's office in a bid to
get approval for a sanctioned site.

Mr. Campbell left the capital satisfied the plan would be approved,
but it's not without critics. A U.S. drug official touring Vancouver
this week warned that Canada's plans to liberalize its drug policies
- - from sanctioning safe-injection sites to decriminalizing marijuana
- - could rupture Canada-U.S. relations. Safe-injection sites, he
warned, aren't a panacea for tough drug problems.

"My impression is that there will be unintended consequences and that
the presumed benefits will turn out to be illusory," said David
Murray, special assistant in the U.S. Office of National Drug Control
Policy.

For the rookie mayor, the dispute over safe-injection sites has
underscored the gap between running for mayor and running a city. "I
suppose if anything I could be accused of being naive and certainly
hopeful," Mr. Campbell said in an interview. But he said he doesn't
mind the delays if the site is eventually approved. If successful, it
will be a blueprint for the rest of the country.

But activists say they ran out of patience. While Ottawa dithers, they
say, people are dying. What pushed them to open an illegal site was a
controversial move last month to beef up police presence in the
Downtown Eastside.

In early April, teams of officers moved in on horses, arresting more
than a hundred suspected dealers after an aggressive, two-week
undercover operation. Since then, more than 40 officers have been
added to patrol the 10-square-block neighbourhood.

The Downtown Eastside activists said this get-tough approach was not
what Mr. Campbell promised when winning votes last fall.

Megan Olesen, a 26-year-old registered nurse, said the police action
frightened addicts.

"The increase in police . . . does not prevent drug use," Ms. Olesen
said. "All it does is exacerbate an already existing health crisis in
the Downtown Eastside because it forces people into riskier and
riskier situations of obtaining drugs and using drugs."

She said the illegal site has been used every night - by up to 15
drug users - since it opened nearly a month ago.

The illegal site has infuriated police and drawn derision from the
mayor. The dispute between city officials and Downtown Eastside
activists has also reignited an old debate on how best to help the
drug-ridden neighbourhood.

"Words just can't describe how disappointed we are that these groups
have taken this action," Vancouver Police Chief Jamie Graham said,
adding the force may shut it down.

"We believe that it could put the legitimate [safe-injection site]
into some jeopardy."

Mr. Campbell dismissed the illegal site as a publicity stunt. He said
his meetings in Ottawa went well and he hopes to have a site opened by
summer.

The mayor also defended the extra police presence in the Downtown
Eastside, saying he promised in his campaign to help addicts, not turn
a blind eye to traffickers. He said police are going after dealers --
not users.

And he said neighbourhood residents have welcomed the heightened
police presence. "Nine out of 10 feel safer," he said. "I certainly
don't feel that this has lowered the rate of addiction but it has
broken up the open drug market."

Indeed, on the notorious Hastings Street strip, the dense crowds of
dealers and users have thinned since police moved in. One elderly man
sitting outside the illegal injection site last week said he felt safe
for the first time in months.

"It's quite a difference down here, eh?" he said looking around at a
park once thick with dealers. "It's nice for a change."