Pubdate: Sun, 20 Mar 2016
Source: Edmonton Sun (CN AB)
Copyright: 2016 Canoe Limited Partnership.
Contact: http://www.edmontonsun.com/letter-to-editor
Website: http://www.edmontonsun.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/135
Author: Max Maudie
Page: 3

SAVE LIVES, SAVE MONEY

"You wanna get high, man?" Shawn Gale made the offer during an
interview near a downtown Edmonton flophouse.

"Naw. I don't put needles in my arm," I said.

"I can do it for you," kidded the 30-year-old, heavily bearded
Gale.

Sharing needles, just one of the potentially deadly practices sparking
work by an Edmonton group planning to dose the city with its first
supervised injection sites; passing around a needle is often also
passing around diseases like HIV and hepatitis, a serious and
potentially fatal liver infection.

When you want to get high, any needle is a good needle, said Gale,
even a needle already bloodied by someone else. To make sure they've
hit a vein, users draw a little blood into a syringe before shooting.
Gale recalled a Thursday needle sharing session - and what the belly
of the used syringe may have carried. In a darkened parkade stairwell,
his shooting buddy "warned me it has AIDS in it," said Gale. "I don't
care about no fking AIDS. I used it. I just wanted to get high."

Sure, Gale said, he'd visit a supervised injection site, if there were
drugs around it to be bought or mooched and people to get high with.
Gale showed me the bench and the pink and blue blankets he'd slept
under the night before. As he told me his story, he'd occasionally
mention a helicopter he said was following him. He'd stare o now and
then and talk under his breath, once about the archangel Michael.

A buddy of Gale's was sitting on the bench. Stephen Gibson, 50, also
quick to smile, suffers Huntington's disease, a degenerative brain
disorder that can cause movement, cognitive and psychiatric disorders.
He said he'd shot speed once, a few years ago, but he had a buddy jab
him. "I woke up six months later in the (Royal Alexandra Hospital),"
he recalled, shaking his head. He didn't know whether the needle was
clean or not, or whether he caught anything from it.

That's another reason it's high time for supervised injection sites,
the reasoning goes: Not only is it anyone's guess where a used needle
has been, and in whom, but who's to say for certain what's streaming
out of it? Who will be there to call for help if it's a deadly hit?
Who will resuscitate the dying doper?

Though Ward 6 City Coun. Scott McKeen is not directly involved in the
formal process of getting federal approval for sites, he likes the
idea for two reasons: "This is going to save lives. This is going to
save money."

McKeen's ward covers the inner city, an area stitched together by a
patchwork of social support networks and outlets, and where the
streets are home to drifting homeless and near-homeless folks.

Supervised injection sites will take some of the burden o the
health-care system and emergency services, McKeen said. Research shows
a reduction in visits to the emergency ward from, and a reduced need
for police assistance in, areas around supervised injection sites. It
also shows users aren't shooting just to have "a party,"McKeen noted.
It shows users often su er mental illness and are self medicating.

The onerous process of getting federal approval has been taken up by a
group called Access to Medically Supervised Injection Services
Edmonton. The group has their work cut out for them. Federal
legislation introduced by the Tories last year, called onerous by
critics, erected 27 walls, A-through-Z.1.

Among other stakeholders, the chief of Edmonton's police service will
need to provide to Health Canada an opinion on supervised injection
sites in Edmonton. Research on Vancouver's 13-year-old Insite
supervised injection site shows a significant positive impact on rates
of incarceration in those who use the service.

Chief Rod Knecht wasn't available for comment, but the head of the
city's police union shared his own views. Sgt. Maurice Brodeur, a
veteran cop who's spent many of his years working in communities
struggling with drugs and crime, said he's concerned by a
concentration of drugged-up users leaving the sites and causing
problems in the local neighbourhood. He wonders whether police will
find themselves more often interacting with users and not less.

He said he hasn't heard a "peep" about consultations with police. "I
would think the police service should be consulted and consulted
early," he said.
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