INSITE RULING BAD MEDICINE

WAVING the flag of the Charter of Rights, judicial activism marches
on, oblivious to its over-riding duty to maintain law and order.

Yesterday's judges and magistrates were a muscular deterrence to the
anarchy of habitual criminals including those who possessed or sold
narcotics. Not so today, as hard core addicts from across the country
flock to the squalor of Vancouver's skid road, comforted by the
reality of easy-gotten bail and revolving-door sentences. They know
how lenient our judiciary is, the hands-off attitude of our police,
and they know all about our supervised injection site (Insite).

Insite is a deceitful first step by bureaucrats in the provincial
health authority in their agenda to decriminalize possession of
narcotics and other controlled drugs. Insite is just the cornerstone
for introduction of an Orwellian system of bureaucratic regulation and
distribution of illicit poisonous drugs. These pro-legalizers shun any
discussion of the fact that their scheme will be unable to eliminate
deadly competition from criminals engaged in local and worldwide
illicit production and sale of drugs.

Insite is a surreal experiment which enables drug abuse. It claims to
be managing each addict's "illness" as part of a medical scheme. But
there is no medical practitioner at the site doing individual medical
assessment of each addict and providing a management technique that,
heaven forbid, would stop the addict from injecting an untested drug
and send him into immediate detoxification and an attempt at abstinence.

On the propaganda side it is important to remember that the Health
Authority self-evaluates this wacky scheme as the best health care
delivery technique to deal with injection drug use. That claim is not
even remotely true and is bunkum.

Let's get down to hard, raw basic truth: Insite is a dressed up
shooting gallery that provides a nurse to assist addicts in completing
a safe and sanitary injection of unsafe and untested illicit drugs.

Insite was to close at the end of June unless granted a further
extension of its exemption from proscriptions of the federal
Controlled Drugs and Substance Act (CDSA).

However, two drug addicts, the health authority, and an association of
drug users began a civil suit to forestall closure. On May 28, Justice
I. Pitfield accepted the plaintiffs' claim and granted Vancouver's
Insite a constitutional exemption from the criminal offences of
possessing and trafficking in drugs stipulated in the CDSA. Pitfield
invoked the charter and ruled that the provincial health authority
intervention of Insite in treating addiction has constitutional
paramountcy over federal criminal law.

In a 159 paragraph judgment, Pitfield chewed his way through a legal
cud of half-digested arguments and granted lawful status to Insite and
its drug abusers.

Although the judgement is long and tedious, the basis for the ruling
is concisely stated in the following excerpts:

"117. The difficulty in this case results from the fact that the CDSA
prohibition against possession indirectly controls injection . . . and
in doing so, has an incidental effect upon (Insite).

"119. . . . (Insite) is concerned with health care (and) . . .
directly confronts the operation of the criminal law by permitting the
possession of (drugs).

". . . the Province has no capacity to override the criminal law by
creating an environment in which individuals can conduct themselves
free of its constraints.

"120. . . . the conflict must be resolved by application of the
doctrine of paramountcy. Absent charter considerations, the criminal
law must prevail".

Pitfield then asked this question: Does criminalization of the drugs
within the premises of Insite violate section seven of the charter,
the right to liberty and security of the person? After more ruminating
he decided that denying a habitual criminal access to a health
facility that enables safe injection was a denial of a fundamental
right to justice.

The plaintiffs took the judge up the garden path and into their briar
patch called harm reduction. They convinced him that Insite is an
actual health care facility because it provides nurse-supervised
injections coated with talk to fuzzed-out addicts about referral to
treatment.

Without a practising physician on hand at all times, Insite is quack
medicine without even a quack cure.

We are forced to live with the absurdity of the estimated 500 addicted
habitual criminals who use Insite -- only a small fraction of the many
thousands who are active in Metro Vancouver -- all prowling about 24/7
in search of property to steal and sell, all deserving of a stint in
jail, all absolved of their criminal behaviour and patted on the head
when they step into the facility. Once inside, the magic words of
Judge Pitfield make criminal behaviour into a health issue. Ill-gotten
drugs -- paid for by sale of stolen property or robbery --
satisfactorily injected.

Judge Pitfield says it is an addict's fundamental right to management
of his "illness." I say it is a bungling accessory after the fact to
rampant property and sometimes violent crime and it is deserving of
scalding condemnation. It is a gross distortion of charter rights to
reward criminality with immunity.