Pubdate: Tue, 05 Sep 2006
Source: Vancouver 24hours (CN BC)
Copyright: 2006 Canoe Inc
Contact:  http://vancouver.24hrs.ca/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3837
Author: Alex G. Tsakumis
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?142 (Safe Injecting Rooms)

NEARSIGHTED DECISION ON INSITE

Vancouver's safe injection site (SIS), Insite, will remain open since
its lease on life is now renewed until December 2007 by the
Conservatives in Ottawa.

They'd have been crazy not to renew.

The Alliance nutbars, who have wrestled controls of the federal
Conservative Party from anyone even remotely moderate and reasonable,
and wouldn't arrange for the PM's limo detour so he could rightly open
up the AIDS conference this summer, have given him even more pathetic
advice.

 From even a purely administrative perspective, why the hell would you
wait until almost the last day of the month to tell a tenant that they
could be history and expect that even if you did allow for a renewal,
as they have now, that they wouldn't hate your guts for making them
wring their hands in angst for what seemed an eternity?

If the political gods take a few of the wrong days off this fall to go
golfing, the genius contingent running the Party in the current PMO
and may end up being responsible for a Prime Minister Kennedy. You
read it here first.

There are two very distinct schools of thought on the safe-injection
site that will battle until December of 2007 and perhaps beyond: One
says that we are saving lives and engaging in human compassion, while
the other says that we shouldn't be funding drug use with tax dollars.

But is either of them right?

Sure, the Four Pillars approach hobbles along, two-legged, without
much harm treatment (a real bona fide state-of-the-art facility is
what's needed) or much harm prevention. Neither gets more than scant
attention. Drug related crime on the Downtown Eastside is still a
major problem and even if you made the DTES one big happy drug
facility, it would invariably die without the existence of
surrounding, sustainable commerce to help keep the area "clean." But
there are signs of real life. HIV/AIDS has been reduced by a
significant enough margin since the site opened. Not one fatality in
hundreds of overdoses and in a recent study only one user of the 1,000
studied was a new initiate.

That's good enough for me - for now. Until the powers that be at City
Hall decide upon a comprehensive, integrated plan to clean up the
DTES, instead of lunatic fringe platitudes about free drugs to addicts
and picking up coffee cups to help us with our collective dizzy smile,
the Four Pillars Plan is a necessity. In a city where we will be
hosting the world in 2010, if the Conservatives hadn't renewed the
SIS, no matter what else they'd have done, their legacy would have
been that they left the host city with an almost permanent black eye.

It was the smart move to be sure, but the worst possible way to have
gone about it. And that's what people will remember.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Derek