Top docs sign up to fight drug blight
Substitution-treatment trial set for addicts
The Vancouver Province
Fri 16 Feb 2007
Byline: Andy Ivens
Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan's grand plan to reduce the blight of drug addiction in the Downtown Eastside in time for the 2010 Winter Olympics received a shot in the arm yesterday when three top doctors were enlisted to advise him.
David Marsh, Perry Kendall and John Blatherwick will sit on the Clinical Advisory Committee, which will try to turn Sullivan's proposed substitution-treatment trial from pipe dream into reality.
"The three of us believe that we need to move ahead," said Blatherwick, chief medical health officer for the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority.
"Finding doctors who will do this will be difficult. Getting the [College of Physicians and Surgeons of B.C.'s] approval will be difficult, but if it will work, it will make a difference.
"If these people don't have to steal to get the money to go buy these illegal drugs -- will that work? Well, we don't really know."
Substitution treatment involves giving addicts orally administered prescription medication in place of injected street drugs. One potential pitfall is keeping the drugs to be used in the trial off the black market.
Vancouver rode in the vanguard of harm-reduction strategies with its needle-exchange program started in the 1980s and, more recently, the Insite supervised safe-injection site.
"We have said all along that these little bits, they aren't leading anywhere," said Blatherwick.
"The supervised safe-injection site was never intended to get people to stop taking drugs. It was to protect them from dying . . . from getting hepatitis . . . and AIDS."
Marsh, leader of addiction medicine for Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, said different people need different approaches.
"We're not sure of the details of exactly what will happen," he said.
"Many people with addiction respond well to the available treatments, but not everyone does, and we need to have as many treatment options as possible.
"We have more than one medication for cancer, more than one medication for high blood pressure. We should have as many medications that work for treating addiction, too."
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