THE A, B, CS OF DRUG ABUSE

Health Minister Tony Clement's promise to educate young people about
drugs, if done properly, might be very useful.

The more information young people have, the better equipped they will
be to make good decisions. Among the many reasons for the decline in
youth smoking is, probably, the increase in public knowledge about
the effects of the habit. Teenagers today have seen images of
diseased lungs. If they take up smoking, it isn't out of ignorance of
the consequences.

It follows that 13-year-olds might be better able to navigate their
teenage years if they understood the health consequences of ecstasy,
crystal meth and crack cocaine -- and OxyContin, Percodan, and the
other prescription drugs that are now also street drugs.

To make young people understand the specific dangers of drugs,
however, it is also necessary to explain how drugs work, and to be
honest about the fact that not all drugs are the same. There are ill
effects associated with marijuana use, but the degree of harm is
relatively minor for moderate users, and it's a good bet that at
least some teachers in Canadian high schools had more than an
academic familiarity with the drug in their youth.

It would be dishonest and hypocritical for those teachers to stand up
in front of students and speak of marijuana and heroin as though they
were the same thing, differently packaged. They're not.

That seems to be the kind of education campaign Mr. Clement has in
mind, though. "We will discourage young people from thinking there
are safe amounts or that there are safe drugs," he said recently.

He also hopes to dispel any notions teenagers might have that
marijuana is legal in Canada. That would serve a useful function
because, sadly, smoking pot is still against the law.

But a blanket message -- "trust us, all drugs are bad, just don't do
them" -- isn't likely to work on today's youth, any more than it
worked on generations past. There may be no safe drugs, but some
drugs, in some amounts, are safer than others.

There is good reason to wonder if Mr. Clement is using this education
proposal as a political substitute for harm reduction, in particular
for the safe-injection site in Vancouver that could soon disappear
unless the federal government allows it to continue. "Harm reduction,
in a sense, takes many forms," the health minister mused. "To me,
prevention is harm reduction. Treatment is harm reduction.
Enforcement is harm reduction."

Actually, harm reduction is a fourth, distinct technique for reducing
the damage drugs do to users and society, as the health minister
knows. It keeps existing addicts from spreading disease among
themselves and to others, and, ideally, removes some of the crime and
desperation associated with addiction.

If Canada turns its back on harm reduction, it turns its back on the
inveterate users, the ones who are unwilling or unable to turn their
lives around using their own willpower. Those addicts will have fewer
interactions with social services, and in the meantime, they'll
contract and spread hepatitis and HIV.

Any education campaign that begins with an insult to Canadians'
intelligence isn't likely to be successful.