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
and stability for the controversial facility in Vancouver's notorious
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 (illegal drugs, notably heroin, are allowed to
be on the premises, thus necessitating the need for an exemption from
prosecution).

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 simply 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 that they're on the right track.

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 in the area, 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 such esteemed and credible sources as the Lancet,
the New England Journal of Medicine and Dr. Kendall would be a travesty.

But then again, maybe that would be a good thing. If we can get rid of
ideological, 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 operations and good 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.

Keith Baldrey is chief political reporter for Global B.C.