Pubdate: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 Source: Province, The (CN BC) http://www.canada.com/theprovince/columnists/story.html?id=ad7d5473-5bc8-4b17-aa73-fd91ae6523e1 Copyright: 2007 The Province Contact: http://www.canada.com/theprovince/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/476 Author: Alan Ferguson Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/hr.htm (Harm Reduction) NOW THAT INSITE HAS WON REPRIEVE, IT'S TIME FOR THE REAL WAR ON DRUGS By extending for six months the licence to operate Vancouver's supervised drug injection site, the federal government has conveniently removed from the table the most contentious aspect of its new anti-drug policy. So enamoured of the Insite project are its supporters that their noisy clamour of support for its continued operations had threatened to drown out the more pertinent parts of Tory strategy. Even Premier Gordon Campbell felt compelled to get in his two cents' worth in favour of Insite in the nick of time before Health Minister Tony Clement's announcement yesterday of its reprieve. Ostensibly, the extension of Health Canada's necessary approval for Insite is to allow further time for the assessment of the relevant research. In reality, however, abandoning the project now, as Prime Minister Stephen Harper had wished, would have generated only negative headlines for his new drug policy. And he had to consider that a mass of studies, albeit chiefly authored by those with vested interests, has claimed a great success for Insite, where addicts shoot up illegal drugs under supervision, using clean needles. These studies claim to show that Insite has directed addicts to treatment, and prevented overdose deaths, without jeopardizing public safety and while halting the spread of HIV/AIDS. A handful of doubters who dared to question these claims has drawn much scorn from the advocates of "harm reduction" -- around whom a small industry has evolved. But the frenzied defence of Insite and "harm reduction" has tended to obscure the broader aims of Ottawa's proposed change of direction on national drug policy. Harper was about to be pilloried as a rigid law-and-order man, oblivious to the suffering of the distressed victims of drug addiction. His alleged callousness would have been bolstered by claims that most addicts are victims of circumstances beyond their control, even though in fact they may have wilfully descended into the black hole of their addiction. As I say, the insistent emphasis on harm reduction, the endless papers and rallies and speeches, obscure an uncomfortable truth -- that for far too long in this province we have drifted on a cloud of pot smoke into a make-believe land of ever greater tolerance for drugs, hard and soft. Many people apparently believe marijuana has already been decriminalized, although this imminent folly was mercifully abandoned when the Conservatives took power from the Liberals. At the time, other western countries were also coming belatedly to their senses, realizing that permissive drug policies were imperilling the health and future of generations of young people. With the Insite controversy temporarily muzzled, the Tories can hope that the focus of attention will be on their main thrust -- that no drugs are safe, no matter what we've been lulled into believing over the years. That's real harm reduction.