Dan Rather doc on Downtown Eastside to air Tues.

Glenn Bohn, Vancouver Sun
Published: Friday, February 15, 2008

VANCOUVER -- A Safe Place to Shoot Up is the title of a Downtown Eastside documentary airing this Tuesday on Dan Rather Reports, a cable-TV news show hosted by one of the world's most respected television journalists.

Rather, the former anchor of CBS News, notes that the 7,000 drug injection users in Vancouver's poorest neighbourhood have a hepatitis C infection rate that's comparable to Botswana's.

He highlights the city's harm-reduction initiatives and takes his viewers into InSite, the nurse-supervised clinic near Main and Hastings where addicts are encouraged to inject illegal drugs without sharing needles, to slow the spread of deadly diseases like HIV/AIDS.

Rather, who visited the city in November and worked on the documentary with students from the University of B.C.'s graduate school of journalism, calls Vancouver "a city of contrast."

The city has "a landscape studded with snow-capped mountains, multimillion-dollar condos, cradling a downtown that's home to one of the worst urban blights in North America," the well-travelled Texan declares in the program.

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