Pubdate: Wed, 05 Oct 2011
Source: National Post (Canada)
Copyright: 2011 Canwest Publishing Inc.
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/wEtbT4yU
Website: http://www.nationalpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/286
Author: John Moore
Note: John Moore is the host of Moore in the Morning on Toronto's Newstalk
1010 Radio. He can be heard at Newstalk1010.com .
Bookmark: mapinc.org/topic/Insite
Referenced: Supreme Court Judgment: 
http://csc.lexum.org/en/2011/2011scc44/2011scc44.html

The Insite Decision

FACTS BEAT IDEOLOGY

Conservatives need to stop pretending harm reduction doesn't work and 
just admit they don't like the concept

Facts and science found refuge in Canada's Supreme Court last Friday. 
The court delivered a smack down to ideology, finding that the 
success of Vancouver's safe injection program in providing better 
outcomes for drug addicts and improving public order is inarguable. 
The court's highly technical decision hinged on the unanimous 
conclusion that the program's goals have been provably met. Debate over.

Insite works on the principal of harm reduction; if an individual is 
going to use drugs then it's better they do it in a clean and 
supervised environment. The goals of the program are to prevent the 
transmission of disease, lower the incidence of public drug taking 
and to expose users on a regular basis to addiction professionals, 
increasing the opportunities to choose rehab over continued drug use.

For half a decade opponents of Insite have marshalled bogus studies, 
torqued factoids and the occasional legitimate dissenting research in 
order to insist that it's a complete disaster. The Prime Minister 
declared it to be "a failed experiment," as if saying this would make it true.

To maintain that Insite doesn't work requires that one wilfully 
ignore scores of peer reviewed studies, not to mention the Vancouver 
Police Department, which found a notable decline in public 
injections, discarded drug paraphernalia and most importantly, crime 
and public disorder. Aside from an RCMP study that was deliberately 
commissioned to find against the program, there is almost no research 
undermining its effectiveness. The only one I have come across to 
date is a critique in the British medical journal The Lancet that 
disputes a previous study about the number of fatal overdoses Insite 
has prevented. One item on a shopping list of objectives is in doubt. 
So if the success of Insite is so well established, then why did 
Stephen Harper's government have to lose all the way to the Supreme 
Court to learn the obvious? Because Insite's opponents cannot bring 
themselves to admit the only arguments to be raised against it are 
rooted in morality. They don't like safe injection ! sites. They 
don't like that their government is tacitly sanctioning the use of 
illegal drugs. Fair enough. Why not just say so?

Moralism is the Achilles heel of contemporary conservatism. The 
notions of personal liberty and small government are irreconcilable 
with a state-mandated morality. To resolve the inevitable cognitive 
dissonance that arises from simultaneously maintaining that 
government shouldn't control guns but should tell homosexuals to cut 
it out, social conservatives resort to heterodox mavericks and junk science.

As a radio show host I am constantly on the receiving end of urgent 
emails directing me to studies linking abortion to suicide, marijuana 
use to heroin addiction and homosexuality to everything from child 
molestation to a shorter life span. Pointing out to my correspondents 
that these studies have been thoroughly discredited is like trying to 
speak reason to a 9/11 Truther. The above-mentioned studies on 
homosexuality were cooked up by Dr. Paul Cameron, who has been 
expelled and denounced by just about every professional body he could 
be associated with.

Of course, that's merely proof to him and his followers of a massive, 
pro-gay conspiracy.

Having been thumped by The Supremes, the more hard-headed of Insite's 
opponents will retreat to the very last trench and argue that liberal 
dominated courts overruled the will of Parliament. That it is the job 
of the courts to strike down overweening legislation and that the 
judgment was unanimous (including two Harper appointed justices) 
won't make a difference.

If the federal Conservatives and their supporters want to inject 
moral arguments into policy debates in Canada, bring it on. If you 
don't like abortion, gays, assisted suicide, harm reduction, divorce, 
premarital sex and single women deliberately having babies, then say 
so. If you have science and statistics that establish a public 
interest in otherwise self-regarding conduct then let's have at it.

But if science and facts fail to back up personally held convictions, 
then there's nothing but holy books and persuasion to fall back on.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom