PROVINCE: LIBERALS QUIET ON CONTROVERSIAL DRUG POLICY IN VANCOUVER

Speculation continues to circulate in B.C. over how much support the
provincial government will show toward opening a safe place to shoot heroin
in the province's largest city.

While some safe-injection site advocates say the B.C. government will be
supportive of the controversial policy, others claim Victoria will be inactive.

"I'm expecting the current provincial government to be very supportive once
[a safe-injection site] is up and running in Vancouver," said Rick Barnes,
a spokesperson for AIDS Vancouver.

Barnes said the B.C. government has been quiet on the safe-injection site
issue since taking office last year, but said Victoria's lack of vocal
support had more to do with a fear of losing votes in the last provincial
election.

That fear has slowly evaporated over the last year because the B.C. public
is growing more supportive of the idea, said Barnes.

But other sources interviewed were less optimistic.

Norman Ruff, a University of Victoria political scientist, said the B.C.
government would likely avoid publicly supporting a safe-injection site in
Vancouver for as long as possible since it could create a division within
the governing B.C. Liberal party.

"This is not an issue [the B.C. Liberals] want to grasp when their party
support comes from such a broad coalition of social conservatism," said
Ruff. "It could certainly cause a conflict."

Ann Livingston, a spokeswoman for the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users
(VANDU), added that she has heard Victoria voice support for safe-injection
sites for years. "But it's never happened," she said. "The provincial
government won't do something on their own about safe-injection sites
unless you sue them."

Livingston said Victoria's public inaction on the safe-injection site issue
has nothing to do with partisan politics.

She said the previous NDP government, which governed B.C. from 1991 to
2001, was similarly inactive while in power.

But NDP MLA Jenny Kwan said her party had been looking for alternatives to
a U.S. style drug-enforcement policy for some time while in government.

She said the provincial NDP and the federal government had drafted a report
in 2000 that incorporated a safe-injection site policy and prescribing
heroin to addicts.

That report was never released to the public, said Kwan.

"What we were waiting for was to see if Vancouver was behind the ideas we
were proposing," Kwan said. "Now they supposedly are."

B.C. Health Minister Colin Hansen could not be reached by press time.