OTTAWA — The head of a native addictions agency says drug users will needlessly die and overdose if the federal government shuts down Canada's only safe-injection site.

Sharon Clarke, executive director of the National Native Addictions Partnership Foundation, says the supervised Insite program in Vancouver has filled a crucial gap in the fight against drugs.

Without it, she predicts users will once again overdose and contract illness from dirty needles. Native people make up a disproportionate share of the rough Downtown Eastside community and would be especially affected.

"We'd probably have, as we have in the past, people OD'ing in your alleys, people picking up diseases and dying when they don't have to," Clarke said.

She made the comments Thursday as the government announced $30 million over five years to help First Nation and Inuit addicts.

Health Minister Tony Clement says the government will decide next month whether to extend the site's licence beyond its expiry on June 30.

Studies suggest the program reduces harm and directs addicts toward treatment while cutting health and police costs.

Clement says he's reviewing the research, but his parliamentary secretary Steven Fletcher has said the decision won't be based on science alone.
 

The health minister has downplayed concerns that the Conservatives have already decided to shut down the site. But the government has stressed the need to crack down on illicit drugs and recently promised another $111 million over five years to help fund provincial treatment programs.

Thursday's announcement "is in keeping with this government's approach . . . which is to get tough on drug crimes while showing compassion for drug addicts," said Justice Minister Rob Nicholson.

Clarke says the Insite program, which encourages drug users to seek treatment and has a detox facility just upstairs, has "filled a very important gap that was existing before."

Opponents say allowing people to inject narcotics under supervision tacitly promotes drug use and addiction. There have also been persistent concerns about related crime.

Neil Boyd, a criminologist at Simon Fraser University, released a six-year study earlier this month that suggests the site actually produced a "modest decline" in public drug use between 2000 and 2006. It found no significant crime-rate changes in the area that could be linked to the site.

Boyd has urged Clement to "put aside his ideology" and be guided by science, not politics, when considering the licence extension.

A survey of local residents found that 60 per cent felt Insite had a positive effect.

Boyd also conducted a cost-benefit analysis that he says showed the site returned between one and four times the cost of running it in health-care and police savings.

Vancouver police have endorsed the site along with the city's mayor and the provincial government, and two Vancouver groups have gone to B.C. Supreme Court to keep it open.

Barry McKnight, the drug-policy spokesman for the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, has been cooler toward the idea.

He says addicts need "a whole heck of a lot more than a clean place to inject drugs."