DRUG PROJECT'S SUCCESS LEADS TO ITS DOWNFALL

A pilot project aimed at helping downtown eastside drug users to help
each other stay safe had a positive effect, but too quickly exhausted
the efforts of well-meaning participants.

The outreach program was developed and administered by members of the
Vancouver area network of drug users (VANDU), in conjunction with SFU
graduate student Gordon Roe.

The project grew out of Roe's research on harm reduction and outreach
among intravenous drug users. The doctoral student in SFU's department
of sociology and anthropology spent six months helping the group
create the outreach project, then followed its progress as the
organization ran it over the next six months.

The goal of the VANDU health network project was to assist injection
drug users to carry out harm reduction and outreach services in
high-risk areas, such as rooming houses, abandoned buildings and
alleys, that are inadequately served by traditional street outreach
programs.

After exploring several service options the group decided on a
user-based needle exchange, which operated via foot patrols in the
evening, from a tent on a busy corner during the day and at the
project's research office located in the area. The office also
operated as a drop-in and emergency shelter.

"The volunteers adapted well to problems and opportunities that arose
throughout the time of the project, and worked with existing programs
and stakeholders as much as was possible," notes Roe, who secured a
$32,500 (U.S.) Soros Harm Reduction fellowship from the U.S.-based
Lindesmith Centre to assist with the project.

The project succeeded in showing the value of such a user-based
service, which Roe says is "a tribute to the skill and caring of the
active drug users and ex-users who made most of the decisions and
carried them through."

Unfortunately, he concedes, "its very success was its downfall. The
services grew too quickly and became too ambitious in their scope."

Roe says volunteers became burnt out by the pace they set themselves
and the needs they attempted to address. "The project did have limited
success in integrating its activities with those of other services in
the downtown eastside and in gaining recognition as a service itself,"
he says. "But its activities also overwhelmed the capacity of the user
organization's ability to integrate and sustain them, both
philosophically and financially."

Roe concedes not all participants in the project are satisfied with
the report and that some have been critical of its contents. Despite
that Roe says members he's spoken with are generally happy with the
alley patrol and needle exchange programs that were created.

Roe says the project's goals were initially compatible with those of
VANDU, but as it grew both in participants and scope, it began to take
on new directions, not all of which were well-accepted by the group.

Estimates of the number of those buying, selling and injecting cocaine
and heroin in the downtown eastside range from 6,000 to 10,000.