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

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Nov. 14 - 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."