MOST USERS WILL SHY AWAY FROM SAFE INJECTIONS

A researcher who studies safe injection sites estimates only about 40 per
cent of the city's injection drug users would use such a site in Vancouver.

Thomas Kerr, a member of an international team of academics who visited 19
injection sites in Europe and Australia two years ago, said his research
indicates the customers will likely be addicts with health problems who
haven't been able to stick with treatment programs.

Others will be drawn by a desire to avoid confrontations with police and
street predators, said Kerr, a doctoral student at the University of
Victoria's department of educational psychology. The Downtown Eastside is
believed to have an injection drug user population of about 5,000.

"When these facilities open, it takes a while for these individuals to
start changing their practices because what we're really doing is altering
the whole culture of drug use," said Kerr, who believes the onus should be
on the police, health workers and users themselves to encourage more
addicts to shoot up at a site.

In two weeks, Insp. Kash Heed, in charge of drug enforcement for the
Vancouver police department, and other front-line workers in the Downtown
Eastside will meet with Health Canada to discuss draft guidelines for a
trial injection site in the city.

So far, it's not clear whether part of the police's role will be to force
addicts to use an injection site, but Kerr is advocating a go-slow approach.

"The risk with just sending the cops in there is that the users see a big
police presence and they just run for cover," he said. "My hunch is the
motivation is already there for many of the users [to use a supervised
injection site]. Do we need to have a whole bunch more cops around chasing
people into injection sites? I doubt it."

Heed also doesn't envision police rounding up addicts and forcing them into
safe injection sites. "We're hoping that front-line heath workers are the
main people that will actually guide these people to these facilities. The
last thing we want to do is really use [the law] to get these people to
facilities, but that opportunity is there."

Currently, Heed said police don't arrest people for simple possession of
drugs in the Downtown Eastside because of the magnitude of the problem and
the backload of such cases in the courts.

"But if we have a [supervised injection] facility down there, and these
people continue to inject in the open air, I would then probably look at
that as been extenuating circumstances where we would possibly consider
charging these people."

The Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users has suggested that a quasi "safe
zone" should be created for addicts and drug dealers. "If you're going to
say, 'No, you can't deal at the corner of Main and Hastings,' then we need
to make an informal, look-the-other-way kind of district similar to what we
have for prostitutes," said Ann Livingston, VANDU's project coordinator.

But Heed says that's not going to happen. "If you can use the analogy that
the pimp is the trafficker... there is no safe-zone for pimps to operate.
The same, metaphorically speaking, will continue to be applied to
traffickers. Traffickers will always be the focus of our enforcement,
regardless of supervised injection sites."

Once the Controlled Drug and Substances Act is amended to make a site
legal, Heed said a study should see if Vancouver needs one or more safe
injection sites. He favours an 18-month trial with sites operating 24 hours
a day, seven days a week.

"We've sat around so long just talking about it-let's get our foot in the
door with something."