Pubdate: Sat, 18 Nov 2000 Source: Toronto Star (CN ON) Copyright: 2000 The Toronto Star Contact: One Yonge St., Toronto ON, M5E 1E6 Fax: (416) 869-4322 Website: http://www.thestar.com/ Forum: http://www.thestar.com/editorial/disc_board/ Author: Jim Coyle, Star Columnist BAIRD REALLY STICKING IT TO THE POOR OF ALL THE cynical acts of the Harris government, probably none matches the show put on this week by cabinet minister John Baird when he announced a plan to make social assistance recipients undergo drug testing or lose benefits. There he stood in front of a Queen's Park news conference, grabbing syringes from a box and tossing them around the room, doing his utmost - as if this government hasn't done more than enough already - to incite fear and loathing of the poor, doubling the stigma the most vulnerable in society bear by suggesting that to be in need is almost by definition to be a drug abuser. Baird said that syringes are, for many people, ``the instruments of despair.'' He said he didn't want the poor ``shooting their welfare cheques up their arms,'' or using ``their welfare cheque to feed their drug habit instead of feeding their children.'' The backroom spinners in Community and Social Services must have snickered themselves silly, all but bursting their Hugo Boss suits, as they drafted that hyperbolic drivel for him. In expressing repugnance to this initiative, it's difficult even to know where to start. It goes without saying that such a program of mandatory testing is offensive to anyone concerned with civil rights, and is likely to face court challenges. Beyond that, however, the government's almost naked malevolence, its breathtaking hypocrisy, its astonishing ignorance of - or indifference to - the complex nature of addiction, which neuroscientists are just beginning to understand, is sickening. First, as with most diseases, addiction is scrupulously democratic. It is spread across all socioeconomic groups. There is no evidence it is more pervasive among social assistance recipients than any other class. Addiction has nothing to do with intelligence, success, social standing, or willpower. (Lord knows, there is no willpower quite like that of a painfully hungover drunk hauling himself to work the morning after the night before.) Anyone who has attended a 12-step meeting in this city knows he or she is as apt to encounter Queen's Counsels and Bay St. players, award-winning actors, athletes, authors, a sizeable contingent of media personnel and, I dare say, the occasional politico, as they are someone who spent the previous night on a park bench. Nothing, but nothing, keeps someone who needs it from getting help so much as the notion that they can't be an addict or alcoholic because they still have a job, a house, a spouse, a bank account. And no one, but no one, has done quite so much to perpetuate that hoary old myth - to equate addiction with poverty - as the shameless John Baird. Dennis Long, executive director of Breakaway, an outpatient treatment centre, runs a methadone maintenance program and was saying yesterday he's had clients ``who are lawyers; we've had people drive up in BMWs.'' In fact, if anything, research tends to show higher incidence of substance abuse among those in high-pressure jobs, he says. Cops are particularly susceptible. Doctors, too, especially since they have easy access to supply. It's funny, since the former carry guns and the latter wield scalpels, either of which might be injurious, both on the public payroll, that Baird isn't proposing to take his urine jars to police stations or hospitals. No, Baird was obviously out to stigmatize the poor - his choice of photo op props making that point plain to all. It was a syringe - the most pejorative and frightening image he could find - that Baird chose to use as his ``instrument of despair.'' That despite the fact, Long says, that ``needle junkies are a very, very small problem relative to the population (of drug users). The major problem is alcohol; always has been, probably always will be.'' It is subject to vastly more abuse and is the cause of vastly more personal and property damage than all illicit drugs combined, Long says. While Baird's posters showed needle-injecting addicts, while his anecdotes were about people with track marks ``up and down their arms,'' a more realistic characterization of the ``instruments of despair'' would have probably been a shot glass or draft glass. But that would have made it too mainstream, too middle-class. That would have made it far less easy for Baird to demonize social-assistance recipients, to define them as lawbreakers, as something alien and anti-social, as something other than us. Third, the notion that this government has any real concern for the serious health problem of addiction is laughable. A report released earlier this year on drug use in Toronto shows that more young addicts and alcoholics want help but face waiting lists of months - delays that in many cases could literally be fatal. Services for those voluntarily seeking treatment have long been underfunded. ``Hypocritical,'' Long said, ``would not be too strong a word.'' Neither would despicable. Or calculated. Or callous. But when it comes to the Harris government and its unspeakable treatment of the poor and vulnerable, words usually fail us . - --- MAP posted-by: Andrew