GOVERNMENT APPEALS INSITE'S EXEMPTION

Minister of Health Tony Clement has appealed a judge's ruling giving
Vancouver's Insite facility a permanent constitutional exemption from
federal drug laws.

Open 18 hours a day and the only facility of its kind in North
America, Insite is a place where public health workers provide drug
addicts with clean needles as well as counselling and support in case
of an overdose.

"I spoke to the standing committee on health at Parliament and
announced that we would be appealing the ruling," Clement told this
newspaper on Thursday. "It will go on to the justice minister in
order to launch the appeal. While the science is mixed, the public
policy is clear.

It's better to treat addicts - it's better to prevent people from
becoming drug addicts - rather than to allow them to continue
injecting drugs into their veins."

Last week, it was announced that Justice Ian Pitfield of the British
Columbia Supreme Court granted users and staff at Insite the
permanent exemption.

Pitfield ruled that sections of Canada's drug laws against possession
and trafficking in illegal narcotics are unconstitutional and that
the federal Conservative government has until the end of June next
year to redraft them in accordance with the Canadian Charter of
Rights and Freedoms. Furthermore, the judge ruled that allowing
addicts to inject their illegal drugs in a safe, medically supervised
environment is a matter of sensible health care and they should not
be under threat of being busted by police.

"The judge gave one extra year for the exemption and the law impact
is that we have to change the laws affecting trafficking and
possessions to permanently exempt that site," noted Clement. "We
think this completely throws into chaos our laws against trafficking
and possession. Obviously, we're going to be fighting on behalf of
Canadians that it not be the law to throw out trafficking and
possession clauses to allow these injection sites to exist."

The injection site was established in the fall of 2003 by Vancouver
Coastal Health (VCH) in partnership with the PHS Community Services
Society (PHS) as a pilot project.

The site is an attempt to address the increasingly risky and open
drug scene in Vancouver's downtown east side. The goal of the project
was to collect information on whether such a facility could be an
effective way to bring people off the streets and into a place where
they could access clean supplies and general support.

To operate legally, Health Canada granted VCH a three-year operating
exemption under Section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances
Act, and has since provided $500,000 every year to support it. The
exemption has previously been temporarily extended twice.

When asked if appealing the ruling is something he feels strongly
about, Clement responded, "very much so. I believe we're on the side
of compassion and keeping people alive rather than warehousing them
until they shoot themselves up to death.

If it was my son or daughter, I would want public health officials to
do whatever they can to help them and (would want) my government to
be on my side in order to help them."

While scientific data collected indicates that Insite is meeting
certain objectives, including reducing public injections, reducing
overdose fatalities, reducing the transmission of bloodborne
infections like HIV and hepatitis C and reducing injection-related
infections as well as improving public order, the controversy
surrounding the facility is that some believe it permits drug use by
providing a safe environment for addicts to shoot up in.

According to Mark Townsend, a worker for the PHS, Insite is
fulfilling its duty of saving lives.

"The judge concluded it's basically a health-care issue.

Unfortunately, Tony was in Parliament to appeal the decision.

He still wants to keep fighting us, and it's very depressing. The
judge deemed them to be unconstitutional and the government has one
year to make those laws constitutional. If they don't fix it, the
whole law is brought down."

Townsend went on to say that Health Canada established a
comprehensive approach to health-care policy that recognized four key
items, including prevention, harm reduction, treatment and
enforcement. He said Health Canada spent only $1.4 million for harm
reduction in the country in 2006-07.

"In the last budget, they deleted that item," stated Townsend. "They
suffocated it without anyone noticing and without even consulting the public.

By cutting the funding and deleting the program, (Health Canada) is
saying we're against harm reduction.

If you don't have it, you basically deny it. AIDS will spread rapidly
and then you have to deal with an epidemic.

We've been lucky in Canada because of a deployment of harm reduction.
But because (Insite) involves junkies it doesn't really matter.

What they've done is refocused their priories, cancelled the funding
and now there's no new funding for this. Harm reduction needs to be a
part of a comprehensive drug policy . . . it's standard practice."

According to a press release issued by the Ontario Federation of
Community Mental Health and Addiction Programs (OFCMHAP), the
organization is in support of the decision made by the Supreme Court
that recognizes addiction as a health issue that must be treated.

"It is time for addiction to come out of the shadows and be addressed
like other health issues," said David Kelly, executive director of
OFCMHAP. "Canada's drug trafficking and possession laws are
unconstitutional when they are applied to addicts using a supervised
injection site."

As explained by Judge Pitfield, noted Kelly, those laws, when applied
to Insite, threaten a person's constitutional right to life and
security "denying the addict access to a healthcare facility where
the risk of morbidity associated with infectious disease is
diminished, if not eliminated."