INJECTION SITES URGED FOR CITY'S DRUG ADDICTS

Recovering crack and heroin addicts are advising city hall to set up some
safe injection sites, or at least a pilot project to test the idea.

A number of former users, along with social and medical workers who help
drug-addicted street people, issued the call yesterday during an addictions
conference at St. Paul's Anglican Church on Bloor St. E.

"So many people have illnesses which can't be helped by a nurse standing on
a street corner," said Val Cartledge, a former heroin addict and now a
member of the city's Harm Reduction Task Force.

Safe injection centres are designed to reduce deaths by overdose, and to
slow the spread of HIV, hepatitis and other infections through addicts to
the general population, she said.

They operate in 25 cities in Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Spain
and Australia.

With the election last year in Vancouver of a reform-minded council and
mayor -- Larry Campbell, a former coroner -- there's now a pilot project there.

The safe centres proposed here will not supply drugs but will, Cartledge
said, offer sterile needles, other equipment and such intangibles as
sanctuary. A legal and calm atmosphere where addicts can shoot up will make
them more likely to talk about why they got hooked and to accept
counselling about how to get clean, she said.

Toronto adopted the beginnings of a public health approach to the war on
drugs in 1989 with its needle exchange program but then stalled, said Dr.
Peggy Millson of the University of Toronto. Such programs allow addicts to
turn in their used, infected needles for clean needles.

Anita Young, a nurse with Street Health, said injection centres make it
easier for addicts to get medical assistance, and for health workers to
reduce the threat they pose to the public, "before they get to death's door."