This edition of the Four Pillars News takes an in-depth look at the issue of Vancouver's sex trade and related drug and health issues. Not all sex workers use drugs; many do, however, and understanding the connections between sex work and drug use can inform our efforts to reach out to sex workers with harm reduction and treatment measures. It can also help with prevention. By putting a focus on the sex trade in Vancouver, we can ensure sex workers are included in the City's drug strategy.
--Donald MacPherson, Drug Policy Coordinator
Finding a place for everybody in community
She's a single mother who just purchased a bungalow. He's the owner of an art-supply store. The third person in this trio is a sex worker who walks the Kingsway stroll.

They don't know one another personally but all of them live or work in the same community.

If the Living in Community (LIC) project works, this fall or winter they will sit down together, along with representatives of numerous other Vancouver community groups, to discuss, face-to-face, ways they can peacefully co-exist in their community. LIC organizers will take notes on those community conversations, discuss what they've heard and come up with a plan making it easier for the various groups in communities to get along, and improve the health and safety of all in the community.
Vancouver must continue to be a drug-strategy innovator
By Mayor Sam Sullivan

It is a pleasure to begin my first column for the Four Pillars News by reflecting on the good news we received earlier this month regarding Vancouver's Supervised Injection Site, Insite. Of course I'm referring to Health Canada's decision to extend Insite's exemption to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to December 31, 2007.
Popular Four Pillars website gets a bright new look
A popular website just got a facelift.

The City of Vancouver's Four Pillars Drug Strategy website, one of the more popular sections of the City's website, has brightened its look, added some new sections and updated its material.

"It was time for a change," Drug Policy Program Coordinator Donald MacPherson said. "We've basically had the same website since the program was started in 2001 so it was time for a fresh approach."
Bus shelter ads spark interest in PEERS
The image of a woman with a bar code over her forehead is odd and grabs a viewer's attention. But what's for sale is a service that won't cost clients a dime.

Kyla Kaun, Prostitutes Empowerment Education Resource Society (PEERS) Director of Public Relations, is one of the people behind the unusual bus shelter ad. She explained that her organization decided it was time to make more of an effort to reach out to sex workers, and members of the public, to let them know about PEERS' services. "We realized we were at a point where we had to look at different ways to get the word out about our organization."
Van brings services to the street
It's harm reduction on wheels, traveling nightly to the sex workers who need a cup of hot coffee, condoms, clean needles or even safety from an attacker.

The Mobile Access Project (MAP) is a van that has been outfitted to reach out to female sex workers right where they work, on the streets of Vancouver. Run jointly by the Women's Information and Safe House (WISH) and Prostitution Alternatives Counselling and Education Society (PACE) the van is on the road seven days a week, between 10:30 pm to 5:30 am, stopping along sex workers' various strolls in Vancouver. As the strolls move, so does the van, so it's always handy for sex workers to access.
Research reaches out to street-based sex workers
Vancouver may be known as the most beautiful city in Canada but it also ranks first with a less-publicized statistic: it has the highest rate of HIV infection among drug users.

"Montreal also reports high HIV rates in some studies but no other city in Canada has the same rate of HIV infection among drug users," said Mark Tyndall, a researcher with the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS.
PACE pushes for improved safety for sex workers
Susan Davis has done it all: sex work on the street, in a massage parlour, for a madam and now, as an independent. She's also the media savvy spokesperson for Prostitution Alternatives Counselling and Education (PACE) Society.

Davis is serious about improving conditions for sex workers. She's appalled by the health and safety risks sex trade workers face every day. She tears up at the memory of a murdered friend and angrily describes the friends who have been beaten and injured by violent clients.
Safe house location announcement expected this fall
Stability. That's the one thing Kate Gibson knows survival sex trade workers really require.

As Executive Director of the Women's Education and Safe House (WISH) she heads a group that offers female-identified survival sex workers a place to go for a meal, a shower and some friendly conversation for a few hours every night.
Creating the tools of empathy
There is a sex worker standing on the corner outside a house. The homeowner, without talking to the woman, pulls out a garden hose and sprays her with water, as a harsh message to move elsewhere.

A business owner, upset with the presence of a sex worker outside of his store, calls the police through the emergency 911 number, demanding that police move the woman to another location.
NAOMI grad struggles to remain clean and find employment
Ask Gary Occhipinti to name the first step on the path he took to daily heroin use and he doesn't miss a beat. "Cigarettes."

Occhipinti believes that the first rush he got from smoking a cigarette set him up for the rush he sought from other drugs he tried through his teens.

The 50-year-old's first experience with cigarettes may have been years ago but the taste for them lingers, as his golden-stained fingers illustrate. Heroin has also lasted, although it has been years since he attained a sense of euphoria from taking it.