Pubdate: Fri, 17 Feb 2006
Source: Victoria Times-Colonist (CN BC)
Copyright: 2006 Times Colonist
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/481
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?136 (Methadone)

VICTORIA NEEDS A LITTLE INSITE

Harper's Hardline Approach To Drugs Threatens To Kill Safe-Injection 
Site In Vancouver

Victoria Mayor Alan Lowe is still talking bravely about a 
safe-injection site for the region's addicts, but even optimists must 
be losing hope. Prime Minister Stephen Harper, whose government's 
co-operation would be necessary, isn't at all keen about the idea, 
and might even put Vancouver's pioneering facility, Insite, out of business.

Ottawa has been funding Insite since September 2003 as a three-year 
pilot project. It's the first government-sanctioned shooting gallery 
in North America, and has detractors both in Canada and especially in 
the U.S., where drug-enforcement authorities see it as a threat to 
the American way of life.

Harper stated during the last election campaign where he stands: "We 
as a government will not use taxpayers' money to fund drug use. That 
is not the strategy we will pursue."

So when the federal funding for Insite runs out in September, 
Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan doesn't expect it to be renewed. But he 
says he'll be asking the federal government at least to avoid putting 
any barriers in the way of keeping Insite open or any other 
innovations the province and municipal governments might come up with 
to deal with drug addiction.

That would mean continuing Ottawa's policy of exempting patrons and 
operators of the Vancouver safe-injection site from prosecution under 
the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, since addicts are using 
illegal drugs to shoot up.

This is a pretty black-and-white issue. Those who oppose 
safe-injection sites consider people who use illegal drugs criminals; 
those who support them consider addiction a health issue and 
supervised clinics for addicts a way to prevent disease and save lives.

At one extreme, we have Real Women, which makes the charge that 
Health Canada is planning methodically to approve injection sites 
across the country for a "startling and sordid" reason -- to make 
legal all mind-altering drugs by "normalizing" their use.

The organization says the facilities increase heroin use and the 
market for it, attract drug pushers, reward international criminal 
drug cartels -- including Osama bin Laden's -- by using their illicit 
substances, and cause an increase in crime by addicts. It argues, 
instead, for forcing addicts into detoxification and rehabilitation 
programs, with jail terms for those who refuse.

At the other extreme is Norm Stamper, a retired Seattle police chief, 
who's on a speaking tour of western Canada to tell legislators, 
judges, cops -- anyone who'll listen -- that there's a hunger in our 
society for mood- and mind-altering drugs that won't go away, and 
governments shouldn't be able to tell us what we can put into our bodies.

Regulation and control of drug use, through such things as 
safe-injection sites, Stamper says, is preferable to the so-called 
War on Drugs that has been unable to stop an increase in drug 
availability and use, discriminates against visible minorities and 
the poor, encourages criminal activity and risks police corruption.

Vancouver's Insite has drawn the same conflicting reaction 
internationally. The UN's International Narcotics Control Board 
called it "a grave concern" that violates international drug 
conventions requiring that controlled substances be used only for 
medical or scientific reasons.

But the European Union's Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug 
Addiction found that Insite and other safe-injection sites -- the 
first opened in Berne in 1986 -- attract long-term and "hard to 
reach" addicts, decrease exposure to infectious diseases, decrease 
risk-taking, provide immediate help in case of overdose and reduce 
overdoses in the community. And, the centre reported, so long as 
municipal authorities and police are consulted, they do all this 
without increasing public disorder.

Medical journals -- Canadian, American and British -- have published 
research showing Insite has reduced in-public injections and related 
litter in the Downtown Eastside, has attracted users most at risk of 
HIV infection and overdose, and has reduced needle-sharing among 
high-risk users.

The Canadian Medical Association Journal reported in September 2004, 
a year after the Vancouver facility opened, that there had been no 
increase in the number of drug dealers in the vicinity. It said it 
will take "several years" to evaluate Insight's overall health 
impacts, but its experience should be valuable for other urban areas 
where public drug use is a problem -- like Victoria.

There were 197 overdoses among 116 clients at Insite between 
September 2004 and August 2005 -- any of which might have been fatal 
elsewhere. During that period about four clients were referred to 
addiction treatment each day and nearly two a week to methadone 
treatment. Others, who might otherwise not seek medical care, were 
referred to St. Paul's Hospital and community health services.

Obviously, real people with real problems are being helped, whether 
or not they kick the habit for good. The Vancouver Coastal Health 
Authority calculates that if it costs $150,000 to treat an HIV 
patient over a lifetime, preventing 10 people from contracting HIV 
means Insite pays for itself.

Harper's unyielding legal stand must not be allowed to jeopardize 
what Lowe is convinced is a promising medical solution to an urban 
social problem across Canada.

Victoria could use a little Insite, too.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman