INJECTION SITE RAN IN '90S

While the debate rages on about supervised injection sites, Ann Livingston
recalls operating an illegal facility out of a squalid building on Powell
Street for almost a year in the mid-1990s.

The project coordinator for the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users said
up to 200 heroin and cocaine addicts a day frequented the building in the
300-block of Powell Street, originally a drop-in centre for addicts.

It closed in the fall of 1996 after the Downtown Eastside Youth Activities
Society (DEYAS) cut the $3,000-a-month funding.

John Turvey, executive director of DEYAS, said his society dispensed funds
from the provincial government to Livingston's group, which was supposed to
use the money for training and education of addicts.

The funding was cut when it became apparent the money wasn't going where it
was supposed to. "It wasn't in our agreement to fund an injection site,"
Turvey said.

Vancouver police Insp. Kash Heed, who worked as a patrol sergeant in the
area at the time, described the injection site as nothing more than a
"shooting gallery," and dismisses Livingston's suggestions that police
referred addicts to the site.

However, Heed said police were "somewhat tolerant" of the site because of
the hundreds of people dying of overdoses in the Downtown Eastside in the
mid-1990s-he recalls one shift when eight people overdosed, four of whom died.

"We exercised our discretion to this facility when it first opened up, but
we had some concerns as time carried on, but it had shut down by then,"
said Heed, now in charge of drug enforcement in the city.

The site was well-advertised in the Downtown Eastside, with volunteers
putting up posters in the area. It was open from 3 p.m. to 3 a.m., staffed
by volunteers and run by Livingston, who was collecting social assistance
and raising three children at the time.

Unlike sites in Europe, where needles, clean injection supplies and a nurse
are on hand, the Powell Street den was simply a couple of rooms where
addicts could sit and inject, she said.

Guest speakers, including former coroner and current Mayor Larry Campbell,
lectured addicts on the dangers of crack and heroin. Campbell remembers
visiting the addicts at least twice.

"I said that what they were doing was not ever going to work because they
couldn't organize it; there were people cranking up everywhere. By the very
nature of their disease, they can't organize themselves and they can't
follow rules. But I told them they should organize and I didn't want to see
them in my morgue."

While Livingston admits the site had its failings-including violent drug
dealers threatening users-she said the site allowed addicts a reprieve from
the street and a place where they could discuss kicking their habits. She
notes no one died in the site, either.

"Kash Heed can call it a shooting gallery but shooting galleries are done
for profit. There was no profit being made there. I'm not saying it was
perfect, but as miserable and squalid and difficult as the whole thing was,
it brought out the best in a hell of a lot of really bad-ass people."

In two weeks, Heed and other health workers from Vancouver will attend a
meeting in Ottawa to discuss guidelines for implementing a trial supervised
injection site in the city.

Campbell has promised to have a trial site operating early in the new year.