OTTAWA -- Mayor Larry Campbell says the country's first safe-injection site for drug addicts will be opened in Vancouver with federal approval by late February or early March. Campbell made the comment after a two-day meeting with Health Canada officials here to discuss draft guidelines for what would be the first safe-injection sites in North America. The meeting drew about 40 people -- including a dozen from B.C. -- from five cities across Canada. Campbell said all indications are that no major barriers will prevent a Vancouver team of health and science agencies from putting in a proposal in the first week of January and getting approval within the 60 days required by Health Canada. [continues 1370 words]
Hedy Fry, Libby Davies Say Harm Reduction Key A clinical trial to provide heroin to users, pilot safe-injection sites and the conversion of two federal jails to treatment centres were among ground-breaking ideas supported Monday by an all-party parliamentary committee studying ways to tackle drug abuse. "We're looking for a national drug strategy that fits across the country," MP Randy White said at a news conference in Vancouver held jointly with MPs Hedy Fry and Libby Davies. [continues 679 words]
Health Canada Warns Sites Are Illegal Without Approval From Ottawa VANCOUVER -- Vancouver's politicians and health officials are gearing up to submit the country's first proposals for supervised-injection sites for drug users, after Health Canada issued draft guidelines for the sites. That's in spite of some concerns that the draft guidelines say Health Canada will only allow exemptions from the country's drug laws for safe-injection sites if they are conducted as scientific research projects and that they are illegal until Health Canada grants an exemption. [continues 411 words]
Mayor Seeks Explanation From U.S. Ambassador America's drug czar should pay attention to the drug problems in his own backyard instead of coming to Vancouver, says Vancouver Mayor Philip Owen, who has called U.S. Ambassador Paul Cellucci for an explanation of John Walters' visit to the city today. Owen says he is concerned about the fact that Walters, who made a point of campaigning during recent U.S. congressional elections against drug-law reform initiatives proposed in several states, is coming to this city. [continues 445 words]
More Drug Users Will Come Here, U.S. Official Warns American drug czar John Walters says Vancouver's proposed safe-injection sites for drug users are a waste of resources that should go to helping addicts get clean. And, he told reporters after a speech to the Vancouver Board of Trade Wednesday, any policy that makes life easier for drug users will only attract more drug users. Walters' speech on America's drug policy was punctuated by frequent booing and heckling from a table of people that included B.C. Marijuana Party leader Marc Emery. [continues 672 words]
Odd Squad Co-founder, Vice Unit Head Back Four-Pillars Plan Vancouver's Odd Squad members -- and police in general -- are at odds over the strategies to use to tackle drug-addiction programs. While Odd Squad spokesman and Vancouver police Constable Al Arsenault has achieved media fame for campaigning vigorously against harm-reduction approaches to addiction and suggested that a new "right-wing" police board and mayor will put an end to what he thinks are the city's too-liberal approaches, other officers who have walked the beat in the Downtown Eastside disagree. [continues 604 words]
'I Am Not Going To Hesitate While People Are Dying,' Candidate Vows Larry Campbell wants a safe-injection site for drug addicts in place by Jan. 1 if he is elected mayor Nov. 16. Realistically, there are zoning issues, staffing issues, a police plan and negotiations with other agencies, but he will not wait around for the perfect system while people die. "Another two people died on Friday night because we don't have a safe-injection site," said Campbell. "I am not going to hesitate while people are dying. It's not going to be a year or two down the road." [continues 1635 words]
A Vancouver group that advocates for illegal-drug users has received a national human-rights award. The Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network and Human Rights Watch, which is giving a Canadian award for the first time, said that the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users is receiving the award for its "ground-breaking efforts to halt an explosion of HIV and hepatitis C" and its "unparallelled success at introducing innovative harm reduction measures." [continues 508 words]
Retirement Turned into Fund Raiser for Fix There will be no retirement dinner with lengthy and mushy tributes for outgoing Vancouver Mayor Philip Owen. There will be no fund raiser where he hands over a pile of money to the new NPA mayoral candidate. Instead, the mayor who has become a champion for the city's drug addicts has decided that he wants his goodbye to the city to be used to raise money to support a powerful about-to-be-released documentary film that portrays the tragedy and conflict in the Downtown Eastside and Owen's own difficult political battles to find a solution. [continues 1025 words]
Larry Campbell Will Be The Candidate For Left-wing Cope Slate A charismatic, tough-talking former cop and coroner is set to become the mayoral candidate for Vancouver's left-wing municipal party. Larry Campbell, whose passionate advocacy for the poor and the drug-addicted while he was a Vancouver coroner became the inspiration for the CBC series Da Vinci's Inquest, is expected to announce at 10 a.m. today on the steps of city hall that he is running with the Coalition of Progressive Electors. [continues 882 words]
Health and city officials are scrambling to get a street-operated Downtown Eastside needle exchange for drug addicts back on track after police raided the operation, seized a tent and tables that they said didn't have the necessary city permits, and claimed that volunteers at the booth were engaged in criminal activity. "We're trying to see if we can reach a compromise so we can continue to have the needle-exchange operation," said Tara Wilson, a spokeswoman for the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority. [continues 705 words]
Closing A Sidewalk Needle Exchange Shakes Coalition Of Civic Agencies A police raid on a Vancouver Downtown Eastside sidewalk needle exchange that effectively shut the service down has set off a small bomb under a fragile coalition that had worked together for the past two years on drug issues. Police say they were just enforcing the law last Friday when they did undercover surveillance of two volunteers from the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, which runs a night-time needle exchange at Main and Hastings under the auspices of the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority. [continues 647 words]
The price tag for fighting the city's approval of a development permit for the centre rose after intervenors were allowed to take part in the legal battle. A lawsuit against the city's new contact centre for drug addicts is dead, says the lawyer representing the group that launched the action. "As far as I know, it's not going anywhere," Jonathan Baker said late last week. He said the group, the GSC Community Alliance Society, doesn't want to go ahead now that groups supporting the combination clinic and drop-in centre have become involved in the case. [continues 385 words]
Would-Be Mayor Rejects Owen Plan, Advocates Focus On Drug Treatment Supervised drug injection sites for addicts are not the best option for Vancouver because they don't stop addicts from stealing or prostituting themselves to buy drugs, says the woman who wants to be mayor. In statements that repudiate part of the drug strategy that current Mayor Philip Owen has championed for the years, Vancouver Councillor Jennifer Clarke said she believes the city should focus instead on providing more treatment for addicts -- which is also part of the current plan. [continues 586 words]
Safe Injection Sites Best Bet To Mitigate Expected Spike In Overdose Deaths, Study Says B.C.'s drug-overdose deaths will probably rise as opium production rebounds in Southeast Asia in the next few years, says an annual report monitoring B.C. drug trends. The death rate has dropped by half in the past few years in B.C., from 417 in 1998 to 222 last year. But the report says that drop is likely due to lower opium production throughout the world because of drought in Southeast Asia and Afghanistan's former Taliban government ordering poppy farmers to reduce opium cultivation. [continues 769 words]
Councillors Ask Him To Lead Party Until His Term Ends Vancouver's Non-Partisan Association councillors have gone to their estranged mayor and asked him to lead their party until his term ends in November, one member says. "We have asked him to be our leader, to be our NPA mayor, and to be a vital part of the caucus," says Councillor Sam Sullivan, who said he believes the rift has nothing to do with Mayor Philip Owen's drug policy or Councillor Jennifer Clarke's ambitions to be mayor. [continues 916 words]
A lawsuit intended to force the closure of a unique contact centre for drug users was itself forced to a temporary halt Thursday when a Supreme Court judge said a group representing the drug users should be allowed to make legal arguments in the case. That means the hearing will be delayed at least two or three months, lawyers said, since it will have to be rescheduled and everyone given time to prepare for the new arguments that will be presented. [continues 414 words]
'Overwhelmed' Quarters Undergoing Renovation Some call it a success, some a failure, but everyone monitoring the city's first health centre designated primarily for drug users says it has been swamped by demand. It was so swamped that the tiny centre in the heart of Vancouver's open drug market on Hastings Street is now temporarily closed and is retooling to be better equipped for the crowds of much-sicker-than-expected addicts who flooded the place from the day it opened two months ago. [continues 762 words]
20 Canadian Mayors Back Owen's Motion Canada's big-city mayors have endorsed establishment of experimental safe-injection sites for drug users, to be run in cooperation with Health Canada, in four to six of the country's cities. The 20 mayors, all attending the Federation of Canadian Municipalities big-city mayors' caucus in Ottawa, voted unanimously in favour of the motion put forward by Vancouver Mayor Philip Owen. B.C.'s provincial health officer, Perry Kendall, who accompanied the mayor to speak in support of the idea, said the mayors of Winnipeg, Regina and Edmonton all spoke in favour of the proposal, which stipulated that the sites would have to be part of an evaluated pilot project. He said groups in Montreal, Quebec City, and Victoria have all been working on proposals for safe-injection sites, prompted by a concern about the level of drug addiction in their cities and the health problems it is causing, from overdose deaths to the spread of infectious diseases like AIDS and hepatitis C. [continues 137 words]
No-holds-barred tactics only way to control them, pair says They've appeared all over the Lower Mainland in the past 15 years: Vancouver, Burnaby, New Westminster, Surrey, even quiet suburbs like Port Moody. But crack houses don't show any signs of disappearing soon. The most that cities can hope to do is find out about them quickly and shut them down before they turn from open sores into the urban equivalent of flesh-eating disease. They now have a coordinated group that swoops down on problem houses - usually identified by a flood of calls from distraught neighbours about traffic and prostitutes - to throw everything in the book at them, from electrical violations to drug charges. [continues 506 words]
