WAR ON DRUGS CANNOT BE WON, ONLY MANAGED

There's no easy answer to the question of why people abuse hard drugs
and how society should handle this social ill.

In Port Alberni, as in many other cities across the province and the
country, health officials have been rolling out "harm reduction
strategies" such as safe injection sites, and locations where crack
addicts can exchange dirty gear for sterilized pushsticks and mouth pieces.

It's not surprising to hear many residents are opposed to this idea.

For one it goes against our previous stance on drug use -- we can
provide help to those who are quitting, but not to those still using.
Why encourage them? We want them to quit, after all.

However, the problem with this stance has been that neglecting active
drug addicts has lead to an increase in crime, poverty, homelessness,
prostitution and the spread of transmittable diseases like HIV, AIDS
and Hepatitis.

Through studies and examples set in other countries, B.C. has begun
adopting a strategy to manage this population in the hope that when
addicts are ready to clean up, they will get help and in the interim,
they aren't causing undue harm to themselves or anyone else.

A B.C. judge recently ruled Ottawa cannot constitutionally shut down
Vancouver's safe-injection site Justice Ian Pitfield ruled that while
society cannot condone addiction, it cannot fail to manage it.

Studies in medical journals suggest injection sites keep health care
and law enforcement budgets down while minimizing harm to addicts.

The Tory government has been talking of shutting down InSite, a
health facility where addicts can inject drugs in a controlled environment.

Federal lawyers had argued addicts do not have protection under the
Charter of Rights to inject illegal drugs.

In its bid to get tough on crime, Ottawa appears to once again be
falling into the trap of following the policies of our big brother to
the south.

The U.S. has been waging its own war on drugs for some two decades
now, and all indications suggest it's going about as well as Vietnam.

The truth is that as hard as we try, we will never be able to
completely eliminate drug addiction in our society.

It is an ill borne out of family dysfunction, untreated mental
illness, abuse, poverty and hopelessness.

There will always be a segment of our population that self-medicates
in order to ease their own pain -- and this includes our smokers,
drinkers, those who take sleeping pills and yes, even us coffee
addicts. Addictive drugs are addictive drugs, after all.

Certainly some of these addictions cause more harm than others and
those who commit crimes must face justice, but what all of us have in
common is the knowledge we should probably quit and the struggles we
experience to get from addiction to freedom.