Pubdate: Wed, 08 Jun 2005
Source: Goldstream Gazette (CN BC)
Copyright: 2005 Goldstream Gazette
Contact:  http://www.goldstreamgazette.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1291
Author: Tom Fletcher
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?142 (Safe Injecting Rooms)

SAFE INJECTIONS IN VICTORIA

Victoria is the second city in B.C. to get in line for the brave new world 
of "safe injection sites," as they are persistently referred to in the 
mainstream media.

If it goes ahead, our quaint old capital will also be the second city in 
Canada to embrace this trendy European strategy. Or North America for that 
matter, since so far only Vancouver has taken the plunge. Once this 
questionable bit of social engineering spreads to two cities, look for it 
to pop up in other B.C. communities that have a significant hard drug 
problem, which is to say most of them. They're already talking about it in 
Kamloops.

The idea of inviting junkies off the street to a nurse-supervised clinical 
environment was nurtured for years in the hothouse of Vancouver city 
politics, where the last election was decided mainly on urgent demands to 
"do something" about the horror show of dealers and dopers haunting the 
streets of Vancouver. Like many debates in our largest city, this one 
develops in a fog of euphemisms and jargon that are calculated to avoid the 
tough questions.

The term "safe injection site" isn't just a euphemism. It's an outright 
lie. You'll notice that doctors and senior bureaucrats say "supervised 
injection site." They're not foolish enough to call these places safe. The 
heroin or cocaine that is used there is bought from the same street dealers 
who have always provided it, and there are no efforts to test its potency, 
its purity or for that matter its drain cleaner or mouse poison content.

The Orwellian language continues to evolve as Victoria city officials try 
to stick-handle this issue through a series of neighbourhood meetings. 
They're "safe consumption facilities" and "contact points" and they're 
certainly not planned for this neighbourhood. This was just a convenient 
place to hold a public meeting, really.

My first question was, why Victoria? The place has its share of drug 
problems, no doubt, but it hardly swarms with nodded-out junkies and its 
car-theft rate is seldom in the headlines. Heck, even the panhandlers are 
cleaner and more polite than most places I've seen. Why not Surrey, or New 
Westminster, or Burnaby, or Prince George, where street prostitution and 
urban crime are more prevalent?

Well, the city and the Vancouver Island Health Authority got a $50,000 
grant from Health Canada so now they've got to spend it. Victoria Mayor 
Alan Lowe recently left his city's teeming slums to take the obligatory 
fact-finding tour of Bern, Switzerland and the red-light district of 
Frankfurt, where he was impressed by the array of medical, social work and 
housing support for addicts. The European tour confirmed that local 
residents have noticed less drug activity on the streets, where public 
parks had been taken over by free-for-all drug dealing and shooting up.

Massive expenditure of public funds creates a superficial perception of 
cleaner streets that pays off at the polls. That's great if you're a 
politician. It's not so good if you're a junkie.

MP Randy White, a long-time critic of injection sites, pointed out last 
year that overdose deaths actually went up after InSite opened in 
Vancouver. Billy Weselowski, who runs abstinence-based treatment programs 
in the Lower Mainland, said he hadn't received a single referral from InSite.

InSite officials now say that between March and August of 2004, they made 
262 referrals to addiction counselling and 78 to detox programs. But they 
don't know how many people actually got off drugs, or even if they really 
tried.

Here's the big problem with shoot-up sites, and giving away heroin for that 
matter. This approach doesn't help people get off drugs. It helps them keep 
using.

Free heroin unpopular?

The NAOMI project, another brave federal experiment, is having a heck of a 
time giving away free heroin in Vancouver's downtown eastside. A companion 
to the trendy injection site, this pilot program prescribes heroin to 
long-term addicts who are willing to submit to its extensive regulations. 
But it seems these folks aren't too keen to become wards of the state. They 
prefer to take their chances with the dealers on the street.

Word watch

Watch out for "safe injection site" to morph into "safe consumption site." 
This is a euphemism for a crack-smoking room. Politically correct society 
can't tolerate a whiff of cigarette smoke, but can somehow justify 
second-hand crack smoke. The push for these continues.

Crack rooms backed

The B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV-AIDS has done a survey that finds 28 
per cent of drug users who smoke crack or heroin are willing to use a 
"supervised smoking facility." The survey talked to 443 hard drug smokers, 
and found that willingness to use a smoking room was up to 42 per cent 
among female prostitutes who smoke crack or heroin.

This group of women, not surprisingly, has been identified as at highest 
risk for contracting Hepatitis C and HIV. While it's possible to pass on 
infections from sharing a crack pipe, I'll venture a layman's opinion that 
this isn't the biggest Hep C and HIV hazard faced by these women. A 
crack-smoking room will keep the rain off them, but that's about it.

Drug tourism

Amsterdam has the Cannabis Cup. One Vancouver tour bus operator already has 
the InSite project in the downtown eastside as a regular sightseeing stop.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom