Pubdate: Wed, 7 May 2008
Source: Burnaby Now, The (CN BC)
Copyright: 2008 Lower Mainland Publishing Group Inc.
Contact:  http://www.burnabynow.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1592
Author: Keith Baldrey
Note: Keith Baldrey is chief political reporter for Global B.C.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Insite (Insite)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/hr.htm (Harm Reduction)

TAKE IDEOLOGY OUT OF DECISIONS

The clock is ticking on the future of one of Canada's most important 
and unique attempts to deal with drug addiction, and perhaps that's a 
good thing. It may very well be good that the federal government is 
sending signals it will soon no longer support Vancouver's supervised 
injection facility (Insite).

Getting Ottawa out of the picture may actually create some certainty 
for the controversial facility in the Downtown Eastside.( That's 
because Health Minister George Abbott has said the province supports 
the facility remaining open, which suggests the B.C. government is 
willing to operate it itself should the feds decide to bail on the 
controversy.)

Insite, which opened its doors in 2003, has been allowed to exist 
because the federal government has granted it an exemption from the 
country's narcotic laws. But the current exemption expires on June 
30. A host of supporters of Insite have pooled efforts to keep the 
facility open - including a court challenge currently being heard - 
and goodness knows they're pushing a big rock up a steep hill when it 
comes to dealing with the federal government.

It's clear the whole philosophical and medical underpinning of Insite 
- - which recognizes that drug addiction is primarily a health issue, 
not a criminal one - makes the Harper government very uneasy. I've 
written before about the completely ineffective war on drugs that 
stresses enforcement and prohibition. Despite that ongoing failure, 
ideological conservatives and right-wingers still cling to the notion 
that catching drug addicts and throwing them in jail solves the 
problem. Their approach is, of course, wrong, and there is very 
little positive evidence to back up their assertions.

Still, the Harper gang has left enough clues that they prefer to keep 
the ideological blinkers firmly in place. The fact that Insite's 
effectiveness has been cited in 20 articles in leading peer-review 
publications such as Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine 
seems to matter little. The fact that studies by the Vancouver 
Coastal Health Authority and noted criminologist Neil Boyd from Simon 
Fraser University (released just this week) show numerous benefits 
arising from Insite's existence (fewer drug overdoses, reduced 
transmission of HIV/Hep C viruses, more public order and a 40 per 
cent treatment rate for drug users) seem to matter little.

The fact that B.C. provincial health officer Perry Kendall, one of 
the world's most credible authorities on harm reduction, is a 
passionate advocate of Insite, seems to matter little.

Instead, opponents of Insite are reduced to relying on a couple of 
Vancouver police officers who don't like the fact the facility exists 
(although more than a thousand ex-U.S. drug police officers think the 
whole approach to fighting drugs has been a dismal failure, and are 
supporting some kind of end to prohibition). And opponents are left 
quoting from a single, dubious study that suggests the experiment has 
been a failure. But when one looks further, it turns out the study's 
author is the research director of the Drug Prevention Network of 
Canada, a prohibition group led by former Conservative MP Randy 
White. For the federal government to give greater weight to such a 
flawed, questionable report (done, by the way, for a non-scientific, 
anti-drug organization) over esteemed and credible sources would be a travesty.

But then again, maybe that would be a good thing. If we can get rid 
of moralistic attitudes shaping our approach to dealing with drug 
addiction, then maybe we can make some progress on that bleak landscape.

So a word to Ottawa: hand this facility over to the B.C. government. 
Let it continue its work. Keep your ideological prejudices to 
yourselves. This province, and particularly the people who literally 
need Insite to stay alive, would be all the better for it.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake