DROP IN DRUG DEATHS IGNORED

A Downtown Eastside activist who lobbies on behalf of drug addicts is
calling on the provincial government to study why drug deaths are plummeting.

At a time when health workers and politicians are focusing on opening a
supervised injection site in the city, John Turvey wonders why there's been
no public discussion about the decrease in overdose deaths from heroin and
cocaine.

From January to the end of October, 128 people in B.C. died of drug
overdoses, compared to 212 last year. In Vancouver, drug deaths dropped
from 83 to 49 in the same period.

Turvey, executive director of the Downtown Eastside Youth Activities
Society (DEYAS), can only speculate on the reasons for the decrease. It
could be because of the popularity of crack cocaine, arrests of drug
dealers or the lower purity of heroin on the street. The latter has its own
dangers, because if the purity increases, addicts used to the lower
levels could end up overdosing, as happened in 1998. That year, the
province recorded 417 overdose deaths.

Turvey said he's not advocating delaying the implementation of safe
injection sites. But he argues a study examining victims' backgrounds, what
they died from and where they died-in a hotel, on the street, in the
Downtown Eastside or Kerrisdale-would give lawmakers and health workers
factual information with which to introduce new health programs.

Turvey points to the Canadian Community Epidemiology Network on Drug Use
study, released last year, which showed that at least 30 overdose deaths
occurred in the West End.

"Do we really know where the concentration of drug overdose deaths are
happening in Vancouver? I think we need research really telling us that.

"This is consistent with how we've been developing programs in this
community for the last few years-they haven't been based on hard clinical
data."

Mayor Larry Campbell, the province's former chief coroner, pins the
decrease on a lower purity of heroin on the streets than the high purity
dope that hit Vancouver in the mid-1990s.

"It probably has to do with the quality of the drug on the street, more
than anything," said Campbell, who has promised to implement a trial
supervised injection site early in the new year.

"But even still, that hasn't reduced the number of addicts in our
population. I would like to have zero deaths but with zero deaths that
still doesn't get rid of the open drug market, that doesn't get rid of our
high property crime, and it does not address the problem of sharing of
needles, HIV and Hepatitis C."

Campbell is encouraged by the decrease in drug deaths but doesn't credit
the city's efforts, as he claims failed NPA mayoral candidate Jennifer
Clarke did at an all-candidates' meeting during the election campaign.

Clarke called the decrease in drug deaths significant, saying she tried to
raise the issue during the campaign but it "was lost on deaf ears."

"It got swept away in rhetoric."