Pubdate: Thu, 31 Aug 2006 Source: StarPhoenix, The (CN SN) Copyright: 2006 The StarPhoenix Contact: http://www.canada.com/saskatoon/starphoenix/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/400 Author: Daphne Bramham, Vancouver Sun Note: Daphne Bramham is a Vancouver Sun columnist. Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/InSite Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/hr.htm (Harm Reduction) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?142 (Supervised Injection Sites) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment) DRUG ADDICTS LOOK TINY THROUGH POLITICAL PRISM What's forgotten in the heated rhetoric and speculation about whether the federal Conservatives will renew Vancouver's safe injection site is that it's not the solution to all of the city's drug problems. But nor was it intended to be. The $2-million-a-year, supervised facility where users inject illegal drugs is only one piece of the so-called four pillars plan. Taken together, the total plan of harm reduction, treatment, enforcement and education was supposed to solve Vancouver's drug addiction problems and possibly provide a model for other cities. Yet, for the past three years that plan has teetered precariously, possibly fatally, on harm reduction and enforcement alone. Treatment and education have never received the kind of funding they need, even though Vancouver's drug policy co-ordinator Donald MacPherson said from the start that it can only work if simultaneous action is taken on all four fronts. InSite's aim was to reduce public injection drug use and unsafe disposal of syringes, reduce overdoses and the spread of infectious diseases, improve drug users' access to health care and, over the longer term, get addicts into treatment. Researchers have found that it has pretty much done that. There has been a significant reduction in the number of intravenous drug users injecting in public, less sharing of needles and a reduction in discarded syringes and other injection-related paraphernalia. Researchers at the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS have concluded that InSite has reduced the number of overdose deaths, as well as the need for victims requiring hospitalization and paramedic assistance. What there has not been is a decrease in the number of addicts. "There were disappointingly few referrals to detoxification services largely because clients usually did not meet the strict conditions required to access those services," according to a recent RCMP-funded study. Vancouverites overwhelmingly supported the Four Pillars plan, but the safe injection site has always been controversial. In 2002, for example, a city-commissioned survey found that one in five residents opposed even considering it as an option. Since InSite opened in 2003, there has been no official measurement of public support. For a short period of time, when enforcement was at its peak, the open drug market around the Carnegie Centre largely disappeared. But it's now re-opened and enforcement sent addicts out into other parts of the city. Streets and alleys in the Downtown Eastside may no longer be used as shooting galleries, but aggressive beggars desperate for a fix are frightening away tourists and conventioneers. Addicts may have a safe place to inject their drugs, but Vancouver still has the third-highest property crime rate in Canada, behind Abbotsford and Regina. And keen as Vancouverites say they are on having the drug problems disappear, few want any part of the solution in their neighbourhoods. In 2004, more than 3,000 people wrote to city council or signed petitions opposing a $5.5-million, 39-unit transition home for mentally ill, recovering addicts. Frightened residents didn't want it near their schools, parks and homes. Council went ahead anyway, describing the facility as "an essential component of the four pillars strategy." Six more treatment facilities are planned. City officials have yet to say where they may be built, but a group called Not in Anyone's Backyard has already formed to protest construction in virtually every residential neighbourhood from the city's west side to its eastern boundary. Its website has citations for studies indicating that one-third of heroin users relapse within three days of leaving treatment, and nearly two-thirds relapse into heroin use within 30 days. When Larry Campbell, running for mayor in 2002, was asked if the safe injection site was worth the $2-million-a-year cost, he shot back: "What is the cost of a human life?" Even at $2 million a year, InSite serves only a third of the 6,000 addicts in Vancouver. Even if the trial were tripled in size at a cost of $6 million a year and all Vancouver's addicts had access to a safe injection site, it still wouldn't make a dent in the problem without funding for treatment and education. And the price tag for all four pillars was estimated five years ago at $30 million annually. The price of a human life -- an addict's life -- is exactly what Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Health Minister Tony Clement are calculating. They will put it through their political prism, weighing the lives of heroin and cocaine addicts (who aren't likely to vote for them in any event) against those who might vote for them -- neighbours who are afraid, seniors who need more and better housing, boomers' calls for more money for knee and hip replacements, parents' pleas for expanded child-care services and even Vancouver Olympic organizers' cries for an extra $55 million. Don't bet on them choosing addicts. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake