Vancouver drug users’ group once considered militant have led prevention policy
VANCOUVER — A copy of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms graces a wall around the corner from where a woman lies on the floor as a needle full of heroin is injected into her neck.
She rises quickly, sweeps her long brown hair over one shoulder and sits on a chair as a man is handed a needle by another woman also wanting his help at an overdose prevention site located at the office of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users.
Vancouver Coastal Health has operated the site since December, but the peer support group known as VANDU began in 1997 with political activists who wanted drug users to demand health services when sharing of needles in the Downtown Eastside led to skyrocketing hepatitis C rates and the highest HIV prevalence of the AIDS virus in the western world.
These days, the painkiller fentanyl has been implicated in hundreds of opioid overdose deaths in the neighbourhood and around British Columbia, the epicentre of an ongoing crisis in Canada.