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Friday, September 22, 2006 12:00 AM

The needle and the damage undone

Vancouver has halted a drug epidemic by helping street addicts shoot up in safety. Will U.S. cities -- and Bush's drug czar -- learn from the Canadians' success?

By Mark Follman

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Thursday, September 21, 2006 07:13 PM

The Needle and the Damage Undone

As a resident of Vancouver, I can say that before the safe injection site, and before the advent of Narcan (an injection to overdosed people that brings them back to life) we were losing 372 addicts per year to overdoses. I was assured by a person from a large European city that this was not a "problem". Okay, at what number does it become a problem?

While it may be offensive and even viewed as being immoral, safe injection sites have saved lives, health care costs and contributed to the overall well being of this society.

I have friends who have travelled all over the world who have said that they have never seen anything as desperate as the downtown east side (where the safe injection site is and where the prevalence of the problem is). We now have a decrease in property crime, drug related death and for the first time in decades, a decrease in the percentage of HIV positive addicts.

You may not like it. But it IS working.

—kmmartin Read kmmartin's other letters

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