Safe Injection Site at Risk as Feds Ramp up War on Drugs
'Tremendous suffering' points to need for expanded service

by Andy Ivens; Monday, October 01, 2007 - The Province (with CanWest News Service)
http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.html?id=1032276...

The 5,000 injection-drug addicts in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside will be exposed to greater death and disease if Insite is shut down in the federal government's latest initiative in its war on drugs, a Downtown Eastside advocate said yesterday.

Health Minister Tony Clement is expected to announce a crackdown on illegal drugs this week.

Ann Livingston, executive program director of Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, said there are about 15,000 injections a day in the Downtown Eastside and only 600 of them are supervised by staff at Insite -- North America's first legal supervised injection site.

"Tremendous suffering is going on," said Livingston, an advocate for residents of Canada's poorest neighbourhood.

"Aboriginal people are dying in droves. It's almost like a genocide."

Livingston said 40 per cent of injection-drug users in the Downtown Eastside have HIV.

"We all just want to blame the drug addicts and shake our finger at them, 'You should get straight, you know. You should stop using drugs,'" she said.

"Tony Clement is acting as though if we shut the border, everything is going to be fine.

"It's hard to imagine where they get their research. They won't look at the science. It's as if the New England Journal of Medicine or all of these prestigious journals that are being published are just fly-by-night fake organizations."

Insite has an exemption from Canada's drug laws that expires in three months. Speculation is mounting that the Tories are planning to let that exemption lapse.

In the latest federal budget, the government announced it would invest $64 million in a new national anti-drug strategy.

The money would be divided into three categories with about $10 million for prevention, $32 million for treatment of drug addicts and $22 million in new resources to crack down on production and dealers.

Clement has said the new strategy would include an education program that warns young Canadians and their parents that "there are no 'safe' amounts," and no "safe drugs."

"We will highlight the fact that for young people, having impaired judgment is a safety issue," he said on Sept. 16.

Livingston and the drug-users network want to see Insite expanded.

"The problem with Insite is it was never implemented enough to impact a large enough population of people to get a significant reduction in harm to drug users," she said.

"I don't think they're going to shut [Insite] down. If they do that, a number of activists will come out of the woodwork that have been very quiet.

"The analogy I use is -- we've got a body covered with running sores. They let us put some cream on one part of one arm and it clearly has cleared up the rash. But we have to just keep studying that one little patch. We're not allowed to put it on the rest of our body."

Kim Kerr, director of the Downtown Eastside Residents Association, agrees that Insite should not be closed down.

"It would be a tragedy and a total denial of all the scientific evidence that proves that it works," Kerr told a Global News reporter.

"The possibility that the Conservatives are going to go that way is very worrying."

A Mustel poll published June 27 said 63 per cent of British Columbians -- and 73 per cent of Vancouver residents -- support the extension of the federal licence that allows drug users to receive access to clean needles and injection assistance at Insite.

Conservative Party supporters were divided on the issue, with 50 per cent in favour and 41 per cent against an extension, the poll found.

aivens@png.canwest.com