GODDAMN THE PUSHER VAN, SAY HARM-REDUCTION DETRACTORS

A couple of years ago, Ben Gribben nearly killed himself with crack
cocaine.

"Technically, I was dead for about two minutes," says the
19-year-old.

Gribben smoked it through a pipe he got from the outreach
van.

The cargo van makes the harm-reduction rounds through Whitehorse six
nights a week, its workers handing out food and drink, medical care,
blankets, counselling, and harm-reduction devices like condoms,
needles, spoons and crack pipes.

"They consciously set us up for failure," says Gribben.

His girlfriend, 20-year-old Felicia Gordon, another regular visitor to
the Blue Feather Youth Centre in downtown Whitehorse, vividly
remembers the endorphin rush of smoking rock not for its intensity,
but its brevity.

"From the moment you breathe out, you instantly come down," says
Gordon.

"That's your high: being paranoid and worried that you're not going to
get any more."

But they did get more.

For three years, they fed a sporadic, sometimes 60-rock-a-day habit
thanks to a family connection, and the avails of hustling what they
didn't smoke.

Fifty bucks would buy them a small bag of cocaine.

Using baking soda, water and a flame, the kids made that into $80:
four rocks with a street value of $20 each.

And all that time, they used pipes from the outreach van, says the
young couple, now clean and with a newborn baby of their own.

The van, part of a comprehensive harm-reduction strategy that three
organizations recently vowed to ramp up, should not be giving crack
pipes to kids, says Blue Feather Executive Director Vicki Durrant, who
alleges a group of teens came into the centre one day laden with
supplies to cook, smoke and inject street drugs.

"I believe in harm reduction, but I think, especially with youth, you
have to say 'no.'

"I don't want to see you die. I don't want to see you hurt yourself.
Giving them a crack pipe so that their lungs don't hurt, to me, is not
helping them. It's just prolonging their slow death process and I
can't support that."

Is the government morally or legally complicit in Gribben's
overdose?

"I'm just wondering, because he was provided with a pipe that almost
killed him, that assisted.I wonder if legally, then, his family could
hold the government accountable," asks Durrant.

"So the pipe made him OD?" retorts Patricia Bacon, executive director
of Blood Ties Four Directions, a primary administrator of the outreach
van.

Harm-reduction naysayers used to argue such measures are immoral;
later, they asserted they encourage drug use.

Now that these rationale have been largely defeated, opponents are
attempting a legal tack, but the argument is bogus, says Bacon, who
points to the Canadian HIV/AIDS legal network's opinion.

The group, which analyses HIV/AIDS law and policy, concludes
administrators of harm reduction are not legally responsible for the
potential harm of drug use.

"I can give someone a clean needle or not," says Bacon. "They may or
may not overdose, but it won't be the needle that causes them to overdose."

But Durrant is not the only critic who questions the government's
moral and legal liability.

Early in March, a board for the United Nations renewed its
condemnation of Insite, Canada's harm-reduction jewel, the only
medically-supervised safe-injection site on the continent, located on
the downtown East Side of Vancouver.

"The distribution of drug paraphernalia, including crack pipes, to
drug users in Ottawa and Toronto, as well as the presence of drug
injection sites is also in violation of the international drug control
treaties, to which Canada is a party," stated the UN annual report in
a Canadian Press story.

"Who then, becomes liable?" asks Margret Kopala, director of research
and policy development for the Canadian Centre for Policy Studies and
author of an article calling on the federal government to pull the
plug on safe-injection sites.

"That's just begging, it seems to me, for a lawsuit."

"The Canadian Centre for Policy Studies is a non-partisan,
not-for-profit institution dedicated to the advancement of freedom,
security and prosperity through the promotion of sensible conservative
policies that meet the challenges of a modern and complex world,"
reads its website.

Kopala's research shows harm reduction has failed in countries as
liberal as Sweden, and they are moving toward policies like compulsory
treatment, and, one of her favourites, the "three tokes law."

If enacted, a youngster's first offense would net a call to the folks;
the second, a fine; the third, jail.

The centre, fundamentally opposed to decriminalization and harm
reduction, does not advocate for the harsh legal treatment of drug
users, but for the use of drug courts, one of which was recently
announced for Whitehorse.

Dan Rather called Insite "state-assisted suicide," according to
Kopala's paper.

Canadians do not prefer harm reduction to other methods when combating
other addictions such as alcoholism, she says.

"Harm reduction is such a seductive term. Obviously, we all want to
see people not harming themselves. The problem is, where do you draw
the line? The experience in Alcoholics Anonymous is very instructive.
They have a term called 'enabling.'

"If, in the end, all you're doing is letting him off the hook about
his drinking habit.

"I would argue that it simply helps them get worse."

Kopala also denounces the collateral damage of harm reduction in the
form of dirty needles and used crack pipes, potentially infected with
blood-borne disease, that litter streets, alleys, and, in the case of
Whitehorse, the riverbank.

Gordon's foot was pierced once when she stepped on a used
syringe.

She required repeated testing over several months to ensure she was
not infected.

"They (the outreach van and Blood Ties) are the ones putting out the
trash.so, therefore their responsibility is to clean it up," she says.

Harm reduction cuts the risks of overdose, potential injuries
resulting from the use of homemade devices, and the spread of disease,
say proponents.

Therefore, it saves millions of tax dollars in health
care.

"That's my job. That's it," says Bacon, who resents efforts to saddle
the van with responsibility for prevention, ratting out drug dealers
and policing children.

And she refutes claims that the outreach van cavalierly hands out
drug-use paraphernalia to minors.

"We don't just go, 'Oh, Jane, here's your pipe. Have a nice day,'"
says Bacon.

The outreach van, the route of which is confidential, visits regular
hangouts, hotels and residences.

It can be summoned via cellphone, a number for which is provided on
key rings handed out with crack kits and needles.

But a first-time user, especially a child, would receive "intensive"
intervention.

Workers would ask the teen about herself, why she wants to use drugs,
and make her aware of the implications.

If, after the lengthy talk, she still insists, she gets a pipe
"absolutely," because the van does not discriminate based on age,
race, sex or orientation.

"That's not palatable for anybody," says Bacon.

"But at the same time, what's worse, what's even less palatable for
harm reduction advocates is the idea that you, who are maybe 30 years
old, have the right to a clean needle, but a 15-year-old doesn't.
That's ridiculous."

Partially funded by government of Yukon, the outreach van is
administered by Blood Ties, Many Rivers Counselling and Support
Services, Kwanlin Dun Health Centre and Kaushee's Place, a local safe
house for women and children.

Recently, Blood Ties, Many Rivers and the Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
Society of Yukon circled the wagons against a conservative push to
quash harm reduction, announcing a new harm-reduction network that
would advocate for the health and dignity of drug users.

"The real measure of human dignity is not how much compassion we
shower on the victim or the sick person, but how much regard we show
for their capacity to think and be responsible for themselves," argues
Kopala.