A WOULD-BE MAYOR'S MISSION - 'SAFE INJECTION SITES'

Vancouver, British Columbia, - Larry Campbell, a former
policeman and the leading mayoral candidate, was campaigning down his
old beat on West Hastings Street the other night when a man in a denim
jacket and with a straggly goatee gestured to him. He might have been
a prospective voter, but he had something other than politics on his
mind.

"Bud?" the man said, parlance for marijuana among the street dealers
in the Downtown Eastside section of Vancouver.

Mr. Campbell shook the dealer off and looked for other voters to greet
in a neighborhood where drugs, prostitution and homelessness have
become an eyesore and scourge in recent years. "On this street you get
anything you want," he said, shaking his head. "Weed is the least offense."

In ways big and small, illegal drugs are dominating the hottest
Vancouver mayoral race in a generation. Recent polls show that Mr.
Campbell has a big lead in Saturday's election over Jennifer Clarke, a
city councilor who is the candidate of the center-right Nonpartisan
Association. The party has held the mayoralty for the last 16 years
and has dominated city politics for most of the last six decades.

The issue that has inflamed the campaign is whether Vancouver should
follow Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Sydney in creating "safe injection
sites." In such indoor areas, intravenous heroin users would be able
to inject drugs bought elsewhere without the threat of arrest under
the supervision of public health care workers who would offer them
safe needles and counseling to change their lives.

Health Canada, the chief federal health agency, is considering
sanctioning such sites around the country. Vancouver is expected to be
the first to try the idea, especially if Mr. Campbell wins. He wants
to start the program within two weeks of taking office next month.

Ms. Clarke says that she is ready to study the idea, but that it would
need approval from the federal authorities and local
communities.

Mr. Campbell is running on the ticket of the Coalition of Progressive
Electors, or COPE, an association of left-wing groups with heavy union
support. He campaigns in a black trench coat and a green fedora tilted
just so, giving him the look of a streetwise, no-nonsense detective
who knows how to deal with crime.

That image has been burnished by the popular Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation television series "Da Vinci's Inquest," a show about a
tough Scotch-drinking coroner loosely based on Mr. Campbell's other
former career as chief coroner of British Columbia. Mr. Campbell is an
adviser and occasional scriptwriter for the show, whose star and main
character share the Campbell name.

Mr. Campbell's early campaign buttons said "Mayor Da
Vinci."

"It's art resembling life," Mr. Campbell suggested.

Ms. Clarke and Mr. Campbell agree on many things. Both want more buses
and better streetcar service. Both favor new parks and improved day
care services. Both want to put more police officers on the street.

Their conflict is over drugs. As a former coroner, Mr. Campbell
rattles off the statistic that 1,200 addicts have died in Vancouver
over the last 10 years, mostly of disease and overdoses. As a former
member of the police drug squad, he speaks graphically of the ways
addicts prepare and inject their heroin.

"Now the addict goes to an alley to find a needle that is dirty and
may have blood on it and then he sucks up water from a puddle which
could have urine in it or rat feces," he said in an interview in his
downtown headquarters. "We're saying, `Make it safe and bring these
people in contact with health professionals.' We will have detox and
treatment."

He said addiction must be treated as a disease, not a
crime.

What to do about the Downtown Eastside has become the major issue in
Vancouver because in recent years heroin and crack users have been
held responsible for the highest property crime rate of any city in
Canada. As a port, Vancouver is an entry place for drugs from Asia.
With a relatively mild climate that makes street living less
uncomfortable than in colder cities, it attracts addicts and homeless
people from all over Canada.

Business leaders are worried that Vancouver's reputation for being a
center of drug use could hurt its bid to play host to the 2010 Winter
Olympics.

Municipal politics here is still a civil affair in which candidates
applaud each other between retorts at public debates. But the subject
of "safe injection sites" produces real sparks.

"Mr. Campbell believes that he will put in safe injection sites by
Jan. 1, whether it's legal or not and whether or not there is
community consensus, and there certainly would not be time for public
consultation," Ms. Clarke said in a radio debate this week. Mr.
Campbell shot back: "The drug addiction problem took off the last 10
years while Ms. Clarke was in office. Rather than study this problem
yet again, COPE is actually committed to doing something about this
problem now."

Ms. Clarke has been hampered by the refusal of Mayor Philip Owen, who
is not running, to support her, in part because of their own disputes
over drug policy. Hoping to make inroads in the last days, she has
begun advertisements linking Mr. Campbell to a failed former
provincial leftist government. In an interview, she expressed
frustration that she was having trouble dispelling Mr. Campbell's
television image.

"It's like Martin Sheen running for president," she said with a sigh,
"and voters assuming that Martin Sheen would respond as president the
way the television character does" on the hit show "West Wing."