GET TOUGH ON DRUGS: CLEMENT

Minister Tells MDs To Warn Teens To Avoid Illicit Trade

VANCOUVER - Federal Health Minister Tony Clement told doctors Monday
that young people need straight talk about the dangers of illicit
drugs, including marijuana.

"The messages young people have received during the past several years
have been confusing and conflicting, to say the least," Clement told
the annual meeting of the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) in Vancouver.

"We are very concerned about the damage and pain that drugs cause
families and we intend to reverse the trend toward vague, ambiguous
messaging that has characterized Canadian attitudes in the recent
past," he said.

The government plans a campaign emphasizing the dangers of all illicit
drugs in any quantity, Clement said.

"We will discourage young people from thinking there are safe amounts
or safe drugs," he said.

Clement skirted questions about the future of Vancouver's supervised
injection site, saying recent research has cast doubts on earlier
studies that found the site has reduced needle sharing and public drug
use while encouraging addicts to seek treatment.

He said Ottawa will weigh all the evidence before making a decision
prior to Dec. 31, when the Health Canada exemption allowing the Insite
facility to operate expires.

On Monday, a Toronto research scientist issued a statement signed by
130 prominent doctors and scientists, suggesting the government is
more concerned about ideology than science regarding Insite.

"The health of a nation is placed in peril if our leaders ignore
crucial research findings simply because they run contrary to a rigid
policy agenda driven by ideology or fixed beliefs," Stephen Hwang, an
associate professor at the University of Toronto's medicine
department, said in the statement to be published today in the medical
journal Open Medicine.

Adrian Dix, the British Columbia NDP health critic, also blasted the
minister, accusing him of distorting the evidence regarding Insite.

"The evidence is in -- the safe injection site is working," he said.
"The federal minister of health should be showing leadership and
instead he's got some sort of message box from the National Citizens
Coalition."