DRUGGIES TAKING THE GOVERNMENT TO COURT IS JUST A SIGN OF THE TIMES

Remember the comic book Bizarro? It was a takeoff on Superman set on
the cubical planet Bizarro where the water was green and the land mass blue.

Here, everything was the opposite of Earth. Chalk-faced characters
would set their alarm to go to bed and dogs took people for walks.

Well, things just got a little bizarro in Lotusland.

In the latest twist from the "whodathunkit department," advocates for
Vancouver's so-called safe injection site are taking the government
to court to pre-empt any decision to permanently close Insite, the
only such facility in the country.

A group that manages the facility and two addicts filed the claim in
B.C. Supreme Court last Friday, alleging that any attempt to shut
down the site constitutes a violation of drug users' Charter right to
"security of the person."

Intravenous drug users who break into people's houses and cars on an
hourly basis have never seemed overly concerned about the Charter
rights of law-abiding citizens.

Nor do cowardly, drug- addicted purse-snatchers appear particularly
occupied with their elderly victims' right to security of the person.

To have a situation where a group representing addicts, who often
display little respect for the law or the courts, is now turning to
these very institutions to claim a right to use illegal drugs is
complete madness.

But these are modern times and druggies hauling the government into
court, instead of the other way around, was probably inevitable as we
inch toward the land of Bizarro ourselves.

With a handful of preliminary studies and anecdotal testimonials from
people who rarely know what day it is, the "experts" have fawned over
the injection-site model as though it were some sacred institution.

They have also conveniently ignored research that contradicts their
glowing reports.

Nonetheless, the injection-site concept has political momentum and
has become a cause celebre among the chattering classes.

To oppose Insite is to invite ridicule and scorn from the
self-proclaimed progressives.

Senator Larry Campbell sneeringly dismisses injection-site foes as dinosaurs.

A Liberal-appointed senator calling someone a dinosaur? How rich is that?

Victoria's mayor, Alan Lowe, thinks these things are so nifty he says
he wants as many as three of them.

Taking a page from the land of Bizarro itself, Victoria has just
banned smoking on restaurant patios, but is clearly quite eager to
accommodate heroin and cocaine addicts.

Narco-tourism perhaps?

But if any Canadian institution would be right at home on the planet
Bizarro and can be expected to behave completely opposite to common
sense and reason, it would have to be our courts.

That is why, as far as the legal action goes, the smart money is on
the drug users.