OTTAWA TO APPEAL COURT RULING ON SAFE-INJECTION SITE

'Supervised Injection Is Not Medicine,' Health Minister Says

OTTAWA - Federal Health Minister Tony Clement said yesterday Ottawa
will appeal the B. C. Supreme Court decision earlier this week that
ruled in favour of Vancouver's controversial supervised injection site.

Appearing before the House of Commons health committee, Mr. Clement
said scientific evidence in support of Insite is not strong enough
and that supervised injection sites prolong addiction and divert
dollars away from treatment programs.

"For these reasons, fellow committee members, I can inform you today
that I will be asking my colleague, Rob Nicholson, the Minister of
Justice, to appeal Judge Pitfield's decision at the earliest possible
opportunity," Mr. Clement said.

Justice Ian Pitfield's surprising decision said Canada's trafficking
and possession laws were unconstitutional when applied to addicts
using the facility, and that it should be allowed to remain open
under current drug laws for a year, even without a federal exemption
from current drug laws.

That year should give the federal government time to rewrite its laws
to allow for medical use of illegal drugs if they are part of a
health-care program, he said.

The current exemption from federal drug laws is set to expire June 30
and the government has not yet indicated whether it will be extended.

Mr. Clement and a panel of witnesses appeared before the committee
for a lengthy meeting.

Dr. Donald Hedges, a physician in New Westminster, B. C., said he
declined to appear by video at the committee because he wanted to
avoid harassment and intimidation for his opposition to Insite, North
American's only sanctioned safe-injection site.

On Tuesday, protesters picketed outside of his office building and
handed out leaflets blasting Dr. Hedges's "narrow world-view."

"Vile and vulgar things were said about me to people coming into the
office," he said.

"This is because I voiced an opinion. That's not democracy, which
requires robust exchange of all sorts of opinion. It's bullying."

Dr. Hedges, an expert in addiction medicine for the past 18 years,
said he has treated more than 8,000 patients and believes addiction
responds best to comprehensive abstinence-based treatment.

The accepted standard of care for "relatively privileged citizens"
includes: detoxification, intensive treatment, counselling and
abstinence-based recovery support groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous, he said.

"Why do the people in Vancouver's Downtown East Side deserve less?"
he wrote in a statement delivered to the committee.

"Health care funding is a zero-sum game -- $3-million per year for
Insite means $3-million less for detox and treatment facilities."

Liz Evans, executive director of the PHS Community Services Society
which manages the Vancouver injection site, told the health committee
that harm reduction is an integral part of a successful drug strategy.

"As much as we might want to force everybody into treatment tomorrow,
there are marginalized Canadians who are not ready for treatment,"
she said after the meeting. "In the meantime, we have to connect with them.

"The way to engage them is through services that are willing to
address the reality of where they are at now by giving them some
dignity, a sense of place and a sense of membership."

Mr. Clement, however, made it clear yesterday that his government
does not like the idea of Insite.

"In my opinion, supervised injection is not medicine -- it does not
heal the person addicted to drugs," he said.

The Tory drug strategy does not include specific harm-reduction
programs because they are included within the government's
three-pronged approach, the Health Minister said.

"We see harm reduction as being represented within the other three
pillars of enforcement, prevention and treatment," Mr. Clement said.

The Health Minister suggested while the research indicates Insite
saves one life a year, the $3-million it costs to operate could help
hundreds of people if spent on other programs, such as
addiction-treatment centres.