In the heart of Downtown Eastside, where the back alleys are shooting galleries for heroin junkies using dirty needles, a long-abandoned storefront recently reopened with a handmade sign out front showing a clenched fist clutching a syringe and the words "Safer Injection Site."
In the last three weeks, up to 25 drug users have come here every night to shoot heroin and cocaine into their veins. They are supervised by a registered nurse, who dispenses fresh needles, swabs, sterile water to cook the drugs and advice on how to maintain veins.
The operation is technically illegal but is condoned by the new mayor, Larry Campbell. He was elected in November by a landslide on a platform of more treatment for addicts, more thorough law enforcement and regulated injection sites. He has not yet received federal approval to open the centers, but this privately financed center has opened to fill the gap.
Direction
The injection site, modeled after similar facilities in Australia, Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, is the only one to operate openly in North America. Its presence is just one sign that Canada's drug policies are moving in a direction that diverges sharply from those in the US -- to treat addiction more as a medical issue and less as one of law enforcement.
Prime Minister Jean Chretien, in his waning months in office, has said he plans to introduce legislation to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana despite strong opposition from the Bush administration. The government is also planning a research project among small groups of heroin addicts in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal to see whether crime and health problems can be reduced among hard-core addicts by giving them prescriptions to maintain their habit, as has been done in Switzerland.
"Canadians see things differently from Americans," Campbell, a former police officer and city coroner, said in an interview last week. "The philosophy here is that the drug problem that we have is a medical problem, an addiction no different from gambling."
Concerns
John Walters, the White House national drug control policy director, has called the Vancouver proposal for regulated injection sites "immoral" and "state-sponsored suicide," but he conceded that it is a matter Canadians must decide for themselves.
US Attorney General John Ashcroft and the US Homeland Security Secretary, Tom Ridge, have told Canadian officials in recent weeks they were worried that a partial decriminalization of marijuana in Canada could increase supplies of the drug and smuggling into the US. Walters has said the US might be forced to increase border security, for protection.
"Nobody wants to punish Canada, but we have to take reasonable security measures as the threat increases," he said in a phone interview last week.
""No country anywhere has reduced penalties without getting more drug addiction and more trafficking and all the consequences of that." he said.
Walters said he learned from Canadian law enforcement officials that 95 percent of the high-potency marijuana produced in British Columbia, valued at US$4 billion to US$6 billion annually, was being illegally shipped to the US.
Legislation
Senior Canadian officials appear to be taking some of the US' concerns into account as they move gradually in a direction that several Western European countries have taken in dealing with drug addiction.
Officials have tinkered with recent drafts of the new marijuana legislation, to lower the amounts of marijuana that can be possessed with no more penalty than the equivalent of a traffic ticket -- to 15 grams from 30 grams, or about 20 cigarettes. The officials said they were also considering raising penalties for marijuana traffickers and producers.
The legislation was scheduled to be introduced in the Canadian House of Commons on Thursday, but officials announced that it still needed work and would be delayed for two weeks. A policy dispute over the bill is dividing Chretien's Cabinet, with Health Minister Anne McClellan cautioning that decriminalization would increase marijuana use -- at least in the short term.
But with Chretien -- and the three Liberal Party contenders to succeed him in February -- staunchly committed to decriminalization, a change in marijuana laws that is not entirely to Washington's liking is considered a near certainty.
In recent years, Canada has been criticized by officials in the US for legalizing the use of marijuana for medical purposes. Canada has also moved more slowly than the US has urged to regulate precursor chemicals for synthetic drugs, like Ecstasy.
Problems
Drug use is also an increasing domestic problem, connected with growing homelessness in Canada's largest cities. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police has estimated that there are as many as 40,000 heroin users among Canada's 30 million inhabitants. The State Department, in a 2002 narcotics report, estimated annual street sales of drugs in Canada at US$13 billion.
Researchers and law enforcement officials say drug use is on the rise among Canadian youths, but the government's response generally has emphasized treatment and education over traditional enforcement crackdowns.
Vancouver, a port where Asian drugs enter the country and a trafficking gateway for much of Canada's marijuana production, has one of the most open drug subcultures of any city in the Western Hemisphere. The Downtown Eastside has become such an eyesore that it was the major issue of last year's municipal election and is an impediment to the city's effort to be selected as the site of the 2010 Winter Olympics.
Program
In his election campaign, Campbell promised that he would install the first of several regulated injection sites by Jan. 1. But six months into his term, a clinic for supervised intravenous drug use is still facing financing hurdles and awaiting regulatory approval from Ottawa.
Campbell said he was confident that the federal Health Ministry would give him the go-ahead in the next couple of weeks, and a nonprofit group has already been granted a building permit to prepare a new site.
Mark Townsend, 42, the director of the Portland Hotel Society, the nonprofit group, said his organization will proceed with the center even if the federal government does not go along. "We want to make sure it is inviting, not an eyesore," he said.
"It should be easy and inviting. And if then they want to talk about detox while they are chilling out, that's great," he said.
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