FEDERAL GOVERNMENT APPEALS INSITE'S EXEMPTION

HUNTSVILLE - Minister of Health and Parry Sound-Muskoka MP 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, support in case of an overdose and counselling.

"I spoke to the standing committee on health at parliament and
announced that we would be appealing the ruling," Mr. Clement said
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. Judge Pitfield ruled that sections of Canada's
drug laws against possession and trafficking in illegal narcotics
were 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
healthcare 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," Mr. Clement said. "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 as a pilot project.

The site is an attempt to address the increasingly risky and open
drug scene in Vancouver's downtown eastside.

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 can 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.

Mr. Clement said appealing the ruling is something he feels strongly about.

"Very much so," he said. "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 blood borne
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 Community Services
Society, which runs the injection site alongside VCH, 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."

Mr. Townsend went on to say that Health Canada established a
comprehensive approach to healthcare policy that recognized four key
items, including prevention, harm reduction, treatment and enforcement.

He said Health Canada only spent $1.4 million for harm reduction in
the country in 2006-07.

"In the last budget, they deleted that item," Mr. Townsend said.
"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 priorities, 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 Mr. 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."