NARCOTICS BOARD LOOKS TO BE 'CLOSED TO REASON'

WAR ON DRUGS. International Panel Is Dead Set Against Supervised
Injection Sites, Even If It Can't Cogently Argue Why

Given how the federal Conservatives feel about harm reduction
measures, they didn't really need an excuse to shut down Insite,
Vancouver's supervised injection facility. But the International
Narcotics Control Board recently provided them with one nonetheless.

In its annual report, released last week, the United Nations panel
stated that Insite facilitates "the illicit use of internationally
controlled substances and violate[s] the provisions of international
drug control treaties." Consequently, the board plans to advise
Health Minister Tony Clement to shut down the site, possibly at the
board's annual meeting next week.

This is certainly not the first time the board has spoken out about
supervised injection sites -- SIFs. As the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal
Network and the Open Society Institute document in an excellent
expose of the board titled Closed to Reason, the sites, which now
exist in Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, Spain,
Norway, Luxembourg and Canada, have received significant attention
from the board's annual reports for at least six years.

Each year the board has condemned countries that operate SIFs,
concluding, without argument, that the sites amount to a violation of
international law. A typical example comes from the board's 2002
report, where it said:

"By permitting injection rooms, a government could be considered to
be in contravention of the international drug control treaties by
facilitating, aiding and/or abetting the commission of crimes
involving illegal drug possession and use, as well as other criminal
offences, including drug trafficking."

As Closed to Reason documents, board members have been even less
accommodating in public speeches. In a 2000 address to the UN, former
board president Lourenco Martins described SIFs as "shooting
galleries," and said they are places where "drug abusers are allowed
to abuse illicit drugs obtained from the illicit market under
supervision and under, supposedly, hygienic conditions."

This skepticism about the hygiene of SIFs seems a recurring motif, as
the board said last week that it opposed "poorly supervised"
injection rooms, which would seem to suggest that hygienic, well
supervised rooms are A-OK.

But apparently not, since current president Philip Emafo maintained
recently that SIFs violate "the most fundamental principal" of drug
control treaties. Exactly how Emafo and the board came to this
conclusion is a mystery since the annual report provides no
explanation of why SIFs contravene the treaties.

Nevertheless, despite -- or perhaps because of -- the board's
apparent inability to construct an argument to support its
conclusions, it has engaged in attempts to silence anyone who speaks
in favour of SIFs.

Stephen Lewis, former UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa,
visited Insite in 2006, spoke about how it could help reduce the
transmission of blood-borne diseases, and advised other Canadian
cities to consider following Vancouver's lead.

For his trouble, Lewis received a call from board secretary Koli
Kouame, who equated SIFs with "opium dens," and threatened to inform
then-UN secretary-general Kofi Annan of Lewis's heresy. Kouame made
good on his threat, with Emafo demanding in the letter to Annan that
Lewis retract his statements. To his credit, Lewis refused to do so.

After all, there is good reason to believe the board is simply wrong
in holding that SIFs violate drug control treaties. According to
Article 4 of the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, parties
must "limit exclusively to medical and scientific purposes the ...
distribution of, trade in, use and possession of drugs."

The board concluded that Insite violates this article since, in the
board's erroneous view, Insite's purpose is to get "public nuisances
off the streets." Yet while studies suggest Insite has helped to
improve public order, this was never the purpose of the site.

On the contrary, Insite was opened to test the efficacy of such
medical interventions in improving the health of addicts and their
communities, which suggests that it has both scientific and medical
purposes. It's hard to imagine any intervention that would be more in
keeping with Article 4.

But don't take my word for it. Lawyers advising Health Canada came to
a similar conclusion about the legal status of Insite before its
opening, and lawyers in Germany, the Netherlands, Slovenia and
Switzerland have all concluded that SIFs don't violate drug control treaties.

But you don't have to take their word for it either, since the UN
itself has concluded that SIFs comply with the treaties. In 2002, the
board, which apparently doesn't take anyone's word for it, asked
lawyers with the UN International Drug Control Program for advice on
the legality of SIFs.

Contrary to statements made by board members before -- and since --
2002, the lawyers said:

"It would be difficult to assert that, in establishing drug-injection
rooms, it is the intent of parties to actually incite or induce the
illicit use of drugs, or even more so, to associate with, aid, abet
or facilitate the possession of drugs." Obviously it's not difficult
for board members to make those assertions, but notice how this quote
seems a direct rejoinder to the comments board members continue to make.

The lawyers' report continued: "It seems clear that in such cases the
intention of governments is to provide healthier conditions for IV
drug abusers, thereby reducing their risk of infection with grave
transmittable diseases and, at least in some cases, reaching out to
them with counselling and other therapeutic options."

The report concludes by saying that permitting SIFs falls "far from
the intent of committing an offence" under the treaties.
Nevertheless, shortly after receiving the lawyers' report, Emafo said
SIFs incite people to use drugs. And every year since receiving the
lawyers' advice, the board has maintained that SIFs violate the
treaties. All of which makes one wonder why the board asked for the
advice in the first place.

Perhaps the board thought the lawyers' report would be more to its
liking, more in keeping with its ideology. And make no mistake about
it, the board has proven time and again that its positions are the
products of its ideology rather than of legal or scientific arguments.

The ideology is, simply put, one of drug prohibitionism, of
maintaining the war on drugs at any cost and responding with
hostility to any suggestion that harm reduction might play a role in
reducing the health and societal costs of drug addiction.

For example, Closed to Reason notes that the board has repeatedly
praised countries that have engaged in draconian drug crackdowns,
including Bulgaria, Russia, China and Thailand, which recently
addressed its drug problems by arresting thousands of people and
murdering many others.

In contrast, while the board claims to support harm reduction
measures such as opiate substitution treatment and needle exchanges,
members have attempted to discredit such interventions, with the
board president, as recently as 2002, wrongly claiming that needle
exhanges contravene drug treaties.

The board is, of course, free to continue promoting the failed war on
drugs, however counterproductive it may be, provided it makes its
agenda explicit.

But as a body charged with monitoring countries' compliance with drug
control treaties, it should not be free to tell falsehoods about the
legal status of harm reduction measures to advance its agenda. And it
should certainly not be free to use those falsehoods to try to
pressure governments into complying with that agenda.