Pubdate: Thu, 31 Aug 2006
Source: Coast, The (CN NS)
Section: Column: The Lowedown
Copyright: 2006 Coast Publishing
Contact:  http://www.thecoast.ns.ca/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3170
Author: Lezlie Lowe
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/hr.htm (Harm Reduction)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?137 (Needle Exchange)

LETHAL INJECTIONS

Open A Halifax Needle Exchange, Says Lezlie Lowe.

The International AIDS Conference is done. Now the majority of the 
world can feel OK about ignoring an epidemic for another two years.

Sounds pessimistic, I know. But I feel pessimistic. And not only 
because prime minister Stephen Harper didn't bother to show up at the 
conference, held this year in Toronto, but because it seems like 
among all AIDS 2006's good work and good news, there are still great 
forces out there who believe HIV is first a moral issue and second a virus.

The world still struggles to understand that AIDS prevention is a 
health issue and not a matter of judging who's living a proper life 
and who is not. That's clear enough in UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS 
in Africa Stephen Lewis's keynote speech at the closing ceremonies, 
which included a stern rebuke against the "neo-colonialism" of some 
developed nations requiring African countries to adhere to 
abstinence-only prevention to win funds.

Some things, it seems, never change.

Just before AIDS 2006, I watched the PBS Frontline documentary "The 
Age of AIDS" (online at pbs.org/wgbh/pages/ frontline). In it, we see 
US government officials, notably Republican senator Jesse Helms, 
fighting in 1987 against government funding for proven means of 
curbing HIV's reach--needle exchange programs and safer sex education 
campaigns.

I see shades of Helms's approach in Stephen Harper's position on 
Vancouver's safe injection site, Insite, where injection drug users 
can find clean equipment, counselling and a safe place to inject.

Insite estimates it has prevented more than 500 overdose deaths and 
has kept scores of used needles off the streets and out of people's 
arms. But the clinic's $500,000 per year in federal funding and its 
three-year trial exemption from the Controlled Drugs and Substances 
Act expires September 12. Harper said during the last election 
campaign he was opposed to government support for harm reduction 
programs such as Insite. We'll know in the coming weeks whether the 
feds will keep Insite going.

My question: where's Halifax's safe injection site?

Mainline Needle Exchange program director Diane Bailey says clients 
who come in to the Cornwallis Street centre looking for clean 
needles, safer crack use kits or information tell her one is needed. 
"They know from the used needles they're finding out on the street."

Mainline's primary funding is stable and comes from the provincial 
government. "We're grateful for what we have," she says, "but I can 
always do more with more money." "More" could conceivably mean a safe 
injection site. "For [us]," Bailey says, "it's health. We do anything 
that can reduce the harm to people's health."

The Canadian Medical Association has come out in support of safe 
injection sites. So has the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network. 
Obviously Health Canada's behind the idea; it's the federal 
department facilitating operations at Vancouver's Insite.

"Of course," Bailey says, "you're going to have the people who 
believe that if we didn't have these services there wouldn't be as 
many drug addicts and that if we didn't distribute safer crack use 
kits people wouldn't be smoking crack. But for the people that 
support harm reduction, it's positive."

Stephen Harper could learn a thing or two from Stephen Lewis. Because 
something Lewis said in his closing ceremony speech about the folly 
of abstinence-only AIDS education also applies to the harm reduction 
approach to drug use: "Ideological rigidity almost never works when 
applied to the human condition."

Perhaps if Harper had bothered to show up at AIDS 2006, he might have 
heard what Lewis had to say.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman