SHUT DOWN INSITE, WRITES DRUG USE REPORT AUTHOR

I would like to respond to Dr. Thomas Kerr's letter, which attacked
Susan Martinuk's May 23 column, "Vancouver's safe injection site
contradiction in name and deed."

Once again, in Dr. Kerr's defence of this ineffective and costly
social experiment, we see the arrogant and misleading arguments that
lack real substance and hide instead behind vague references,
overblown statements, and the assumption that the public should just
trust the good doctors at Insite and assume anyone who disagrees is
stupid, ideological, or both.

This sort of arrogance, typical of the supporters of Insite, is
dangerous because it shouts down any free thought, debate,
non-politically correct views, and public involvement in the direction
society takes on an important social, health and moral issue.

The social engineers behind Insite and its parent, harm reduction,
want the rest of us out of the equation. After all, they seem to
think, we don't know what is best and they do.

Martinuk is simply trying to point out the smothering ideology behind
Insite that is so apparent in the vitriol, half-truths and efforts to
bully the federal government being pumped out by its supporters.

I am the author of one of the three academic reports that looked at
the evaluations of Insite, and all concluded basically the same
things: The data in the published evaluations showed clearly that
Insite is not preventing overdose deaths (maybe one a year), the
spread of disease, improving public order, or getting people into long
term treatment.

The research conclusions drawn are overly positive and ignore
significant negative findings, such as that very few addicts use it
for all their injections; most use it only sporadically; it does not
reach younger addicts, nor does it reach cocaine injectors, a third of
addicts in the area.

Dr. Kerr must know as a researcher that something being in a
peer-reviewed journal does not mean the science is necessarily good or
the interpretations accurate.

This argument is at once tiresome and misleading. I hold that the bias
from the beginning of Insite was so strong as to make it nigh
impossible for objective research to be conducted, if undertaken by or
funded by supporters of the parent philosophy.

That bias is monumentally evident now. Insite and programs like it are
built on a false assumption -- that we can control addicts' behaviours
while they keep using.

During Insite's time as a pilot study -- that is what it was, but one
wouldn't know it to hear Dr. Kerr and others -- treatment languished
to the point where most long-term treatment facilities in the area
require a client to co-pay and have prohibitive wait-lists. Prevention
to reduce the onset of drug use has been entirely ignored.

Now that the experiment is over, it is time for Canada to heed the
UN's call to respect international treaties by ending the exemption
required to run Insite.

It is time to confront the harm reduction philosophy and to strengthen
and improve treatment and especially prevention in this country.

What is embarrassing here is not that citizens like Martinuk have
doubts and are saying so. It's that the researchers, operators, and
public health people aligned with Insite and with harm reduction
generally are so caught up in this false ideology of letting people
use their drugs and us just controlling the negative consequences of
their using -- even treating drug use as a human right and a lifestyle
choice -- that they cling to Insite in spite of the facts.

This is entirely unscientific and unprofessional. The fact is, Insite
was an important beachhead for harm reduction ideologists. Thankfully,
it looks like that beachhead is being lost.

And well it should.