SAFE SHOOTING SITE ONE PART OF THE SOLUTION

A thin pale woman on an old one-speed bike slaloms west down the sidewalk
and through the crowd on the south side of the 100 block East Hastings
Tuesday afternoon.

The closer she comes to Columbia, the thicker the mass of humanity:
scabby-faced dealers, strung-out hookers and junkies with glass crack pipes
hanging from their lips, muttering to each other and anyone who passes.
Vancouver's notorious outdoor drug market is open for business in its new
location.

In the past three months, this festering sore has shifted away from the
corner of Main and Hastings, liberating the entrance to the Carnegie Centre.

The change has come through a combination of factors: a redesign of the
entrance to the public toilets that makes it difficult for dealers and
their clients to congregate, and the regular presence of a cruiser and a
couple of cops.

Carnegie director Michael Clague remembers the day, Nov. 6, when the police
first became a permanent presence. The drug dealers slithered to the other
end of the block. "It was," he says, "as if the building got lighter."

The Downtown Eastside had its living room back again. The gauntlet of
muscled security at Carnegie's front door cooled out. Old people and folks
with kids who had drifted away because of the scene on the street came back
to play cards, take courses, use the library and the Internet or get a hot
lunch.

Across the alley, the Health Contact Centre was open from early afternoon
through the night until early morning. Run by the regional health authority
as part of the city's drug strategy, it's another step on the road to
bringing the neighbourhood back to civilization.

The centre is not without problems, though. It was supposed to provide
low-threshold access to health care for addicts, as well as much needed
night-time toilets. The human sewage in the alley is evidence the current
access policy is too restrictive. But these are early days.

Across the street from the open drug market and the boarded-up Blue Eagle
Caf, is the city's safe injection site, the first such site in North
America-not quite finished, not yet opened, but unveiled for public view
last week.

In the bad old days, when the Blue Eagle was operating and frequented by
junkies, management drilled holes in all the teaspoons to prevent them from
being stolen and used to cook up heroin in some back alley before it was
sucked into a syringe and pumped into a junkie's vein.

Now the plan is to provide junkies with spoons, syringes and medical
supervision in a bright, clean, stainless steel setting funded by government.

The safe shooting site was actually built with an act of political defiance
in mind. The folks at the Portland Hotel Society spearheaded the
fundraising and volunteer effort and had the site finished to the stage it
is today before the last municipal election.

The expectation was that Jennifer Clarke and the NPA would win control of
city hall and kill any chance of a safe shooting site in the Downtown
Eastside. In that event, activists would open the doors, start operating
and take the heat.

But when Larry Campbell and COPE swept in, plans changed. City hall was on
side. The windows at the safe shooting site remained papered over.

Those in the know simply referred to the installation as "the hair salon"
when anyone asked what was planned for the building.

Now that the health authority is close to filing an application to Ottawa
for an exemption under the drug laws to allow for the consumption of
illegal substances, the site has been unveiled.

It will be no silver bullet. Like the shifted drug market and the Contact
Centre, it's just another small piece of the solution.