NDP Deputy Leader Libby Davies' East Vancouver by the numbers

Will NDP Leader Tom Mulcair let Libby Davies do for Canada what she did for East Vancouver?


4,600 intravenous drug users live in the Downtown Eastside


587 drug injections happen daily at the Supervised Injection Site; this includes people who return multiple times a day


20 per cent of people in the Downtown Eastside are homeless


87 per cent of the population has Hepatitis C


200 people died of drug overdoses in the Downtown Eastside in 1993, the worst year on record


1997 was the year a public health emergency was declared in the DTES


270, 000 tax dollars were given to VANDU – the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users – last year. VANDU advocates, among other things, for “the right to obtain, prepare and inject drugs, and to be intoxicated on drugs”


49 per cent of police contacts in the Downtown Eastside are believed to be with someone who has a mental illness


80 per cent of Downtown Eastside residents have been previously incarcerated


1 year is the new mandatory minimum jail sentence a repeat offender who is caught selling drugs; 2 years if they’re near a school or caught selling to youth


Check out more at the fascinating blog Eastside Stories: Diary of a Vancouver Beat Cop