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.