Pubdate: Wed, 16 Mar 2005 Source: Vancouver Courier (CN BC) Copyright: 2005 Vancouver Courier Contact: http://www.vancourier.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/474 Author: Allen Garr Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/hr.htm (Harm Reduction) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?137 (Needle Exchange) PROGRESS MADE IN DRUG POLICY I was reminded how far we have come when I attended a conference last week to mark four years since Vancouver formally adopted its Four Pillar drug strategy. The kernel of the idea started long before that. In 1989 with a load of lobbying from Downtown Eastside activist John Turvey and support from then-Vancouver mayor Gordon Campbell, council voted to create a needle exchange program in the city. They were motivated by the devastating spread of disease caused by shared needles. In spite of critics wailing that public money was encouraging illegal acts, for the first time politicians accepted a connection between injection drug use and health problems suffered by the addicts. If for no other reason, needle exchanges made sense on economic grounds; sick and dying junkies were a burden on the health care system. Four years later B.C.'s Chief Coroner Vince Cain noted the epidemic in heroin overdoses in Vancouver-then over 200 a year-and called for a safe injection site. That wouldn't come for another decade. But in 1994 Cain produced what is considered a landmark report in the evolution of this country's drug policy. His Illicit Narcotic Overdose Deaths report is seen as the beginning of the harm reduction movement. He not only repeated his call for a safe injection site, but wanted all drugs, hard and soft, to be decriminalized. In 1996 the Vancouver Richmond Health Board declared an HIV epidemic in Vancouver. The primary causes were a combination of sexual activity and intravenous drug use. By the next year and with the continued lobbying of Bud Osborne, another Downtown Eastside activist, the health board declared a public health emergency. To help quell the impact of that emergency, Vancouver had a well established street nurse program funded by the health board. It was running a mobile clinic, exchanging needles and handing out condoms on city streets. The goal was to reduce the overwhelming spread of AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases that were killing people and sapping health care resources. Overdose deaths had dropped to about 150 a year and continued to fall. Donald MacPherson moved from his position as director of the Carnegie Centre to city hall where he became the first co-coordinator of drug policy. He gave shape to what would become known as the Four Pillars. It was that policy that Vancouver Mayor Philip Owen embraced with increasing passion over the years, coincidentally alienating himself from his party and most of his NPA colleagues on council. Throughout this period business types in Gastown and Chinatown were increasingly twitchy about official support for a drug activity they claimed was ruining their economic prospects. Near the end of 1999, when the street nurse program began to work out of the Chinese Cultural Centre, there was an explosion of resistance from Chinatown merchants. They would eventually join Bryce Rositch and others from Gastown to form the Community Alliance. Together they vigorously opposed plans for four centres to deal with drug addicts in the Downtown Eastside. They lost. In May of 2001 the city adopted the Four Pillars as Vancouver's official drug strategy. Two years later in September 2003, the first safe injection site in North America opened in Vancouver. It was virtually unopposed. Drug overdoses had leveled out to about 50 a year. On Monday, I'm told, the first clients received free heroin in another facility, at Hastings at Abbott, as part of the North American Opiate Medication Initiative. On Friday the British medical journal, The Lancet, will have an article noting the progress made at Vancouver's safe injection site in reducing the spread of disease. - --- MAP posted-by: Beth