ADDICTS BETTER OFF THAN KIDS UNDER OUR LAWS

Why Is It OK To Fund Junkies But Not Autistic Children?

Welcome to topsy-turvey land, where the law dictates that junkies
have a legal right to pump unlawful toxins into their veins, using
state-issued rigs in a free, taxpayer-backed clinic with public nurses on hand.

Meanwhile, parents who struggle to raise autistic children are
required to dig into their own pockets for critical treatment for
their youngsters' debilitating medical condition.

With legal decisions such as these on the books, it's no wonder the
federal government is appealing the latest court ruling that addicts
have the constitutional right to get wasted in a publicly funded site
if it's part of a health-care program.

I'm no legal expert, but at first glance it seems B.C. Supreme Court
Justice Ian Pitfield's ideas on social policy clash with those of
Canada's top court.

It was in late 2004 when our autistic kids were unanimously denied an
automatic right to state-funded therapy under a ruling by the
nation's leading law authorities.

Two B.C. families had argued that about 90 per cent of autistic
children, without early treatment, end up in costly institutions that
are funded by taxpayers, anyway. They claimed the government, which
funds about 70 per cent of available health services, was
discriminating against autistic kids in not extending medical coverage to them.

But Beverley McLachlin, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada,
sympathized with the families' situation but said it wasn't the
court's place to dictate where the provinces spend their limited
health dollars.

Health-care funding was not a constitutional right of all Canadians
but a policy issue for elected governments, the high court said.

To conclude otherwise would lead to inconceivable public demands for
health-care services. Governments would be in the impossible position
of having to supply unlimited medicare funds to maintain expensive
treatments for a vast array of diseases, disorders and disabilities.

Fast-forward to Pitfield's decision last week, which deemed the
country's Controlled Drugs and Substances Act unconstitutional.

Why? Because in rendering the sale and possession of drugs illegal,
the law sabotages the right to medical treatment of 500 core addicts
who regularly inject unlawful drugs at Insite, Vancouver's
supervised-injection hangout.

He gave the feds a year to rewrite the law to allow for medical use
of illegal drugs if they are part of a bigger health-care program.

Never mind that common sense goes out the window when one court says
the public must bankroll the habits of drug addicts while another
court says the same public is under no obligation to fund treatment
for autistic kids.

Never mind that up to 97 per cent of injections and 100 per cent of
drug ingestion by other means, mainly smoking, still occurs outside
Insite. Or that research shows that, for the operating cost of $3
million a year, the facility may be saving one life. Or that Insite
prospers while the pathetically few rehab centres in the city operate
hand-to-mouth to provide the few beds they can.

Federal Health Minister Tony Clement got it right last week when he
said: "Every dollar spent on the supervised-injection site diverts a
dollar away from treatment that could lead to full recovery."

Now, if he'd just put our money where his mouth is.