SAFE HOUSES FOR DRUG USERS URGED

Canada has a moral, if not a legal, responsibility to provide safe
injection facilities for drug users, a new report funded by Health Canada says.

Alarming HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C and injection drug use statistics show that
the country is the midst of a public health crisis and that the
government's response has been far from effective, the Canadian HIV-AIDS
Legal Network said Thursday.

"It is really not about condoning drug use," Ralf Jurgens, the legal
network's executive director, told globeandmail.com on Thursday.

"We cannot continue to close our eyes to the staggering amount of avoidable
disease and death resulting not just from injection drug use but also from
governments' failure to put a comprehensive prevention and treatment
strategy in place," Mr. Jurgens said.

After a year of consultations, the legal network released a report Thursday
called Establishing Safe Injection Facilities in Canada: Legal and Ethical
Issues that includes six recommendations for immediate government action.

The report concludes that Canada has a legal and moral obligation to allow
for and fund trials of safe injection facilities as part of an overall
strategy to respond more effectively to the crisis among drug users.

Establishing and monitoring the effectiveness of a single facility during
its first year could cost between $500,000 and $800,000, Mr. Jurgens said.

These facilities should not be confused with unsanctioned "shooting
galleries" where illegal drugs are bought, sold and often used in unsafe
conditions, he said.

Instead, the facilities would provide a safer and cleaner place for drug
users, getting them off the street and out of back alleys, he said. The
facilities would be accompanied by other programs such as drug treatment.

Similar facilities in Europe and Australia are successfully operating, he
added.
Jonathan Baker, a Vancouver lawyer and former city councillor, is not
convinced that scarce public-health dollars should be spent on such facilities.

"Sometimes the road to hell is paved with good intentions," Mr. Baker told
globeandmail.com. "In the end more people may actually die ... you may
increase the amount of drug use."

Mr. Baker recently represented a group of local business owners and
residents opposed to a new centre for drug users in Vancouver's Downtown
Eastside.
Ann Livingston, project manager of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug
Users, says there exists an immediate need for such facilities.

"We desperately need safe injection facilities as one way to prevent some
of the most serious consequences of injection drug use, and we have been
asking for these facilities for many years," Ms. Livingston, said in
prepared remarks Thursday.

In 1999, just over one-third of the estimated 4,190 new HIV infections in
Canada were among injection drug users, the report says. And more than 60
per cent of the approximately 4,000 new hepatitis C infections each year
are connected to injection drug use.

The number of deaths from drug overdose is no less alarming, the report
says. In British Columbia alone, more than 2,000 deaths since 1992 have
been the result of a drug overdose and overdoses have been the leading
cause of death among people between the ages of 30 to 49 in the province
for five consecutive years.

The report has gone not only to Health Canada but to provincial health
ministers and municipal leaders, Mr. Jurgens said.