Pubdate: Fri, 27 Jun 2003 Source: Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) Copyright: 2003 The Sydney Morning Herald Contact: http://www.smh.com.au/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/441 Bookmarks: http://www.mapinc.org/find?142 (Safe Injecting Rooms) http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Kings+Cross (Kings Cross) http://www.mapinc.org/walters.htm (Walters, John) CANADA APPROVES SAFE INJECTING ROOM Canada's Health Ministry has approved North America's first sanctioned "safe injection site" for illegal drug users, a controversial project in Vancouver that the United States has criticised as state-sponsored suicide. The clinic, in the heart of the city's drug- and crime-ridden Downtown Eastside neighbourhood, will provide a setting where addicts can shoot up under the supervision of a registered nurse in a a legal safe zone. The aim of the scheme, as with the trial under way in Kings Cross, Sydney, is to offer "injection supervision" to prevent overdoses, provide clean needles to reduce the spread of HIV, hepatitis and other blood-borne diseases epidemic among intravenous drug users, and offer help to those who want to kick their habits. The national Health Ministry has granted the program - which has been endorsed by Vancouver police - a federal criminal exemption. Addicts cannot be arrested for possessing illegal narcotics while using the clinic. "Users can bring their own drugs, heroin or cocaine onto the site and inject them," said Viviana Zanocco, spokeswoman for the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority. John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, this year described the proposed injecting room - which could be operating by September with the help of a Canadian government grant - as "state-sponsored personal suicide". He argued it would enable addicts to continue poisoning themselves in a clinical setting near the US border. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake