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February 2004 Cover
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The roughly 5,000 heroin addicts in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside neighborhood prefer the city's first legal supervised safe injection site to drug use on the street, but some fear one such site is not enough. "All the research on different sites anywhere in the world shows
that the idea of having one in a city is not enough," said Ann Livingston, a project coordinator with the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users. "The Downtown Eastside needs a minimum of four with staggered hours and each with a different feel [and] different setting to attract
different groups of people."
Another problem in Vancouver is an increase in crack smoking, with smokers spreading hepatitis C through burns and splits on their lips. About 90 percent of IV drug users have hepatitis C and some 30 percent have HIV. The injection site built an inhalation room, and the
staff is lobbying for an exemption to let people smoke crack there.
Editor's Note: from the Toronto Star
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