HARPER MUST START RETHINKING HIS ANTI-DRUG POLICY

SAFE-INJECTION SITE: PM's correct choice is to OK facility's ongoing
operation

He calls it having conviction, others call it being stubborn. Either
way, Prime Minister Stephen Harper isn't known for changing his mind.

Harper's addiction to Reform-esque, boot-camp style ideology on
injection drugs could spell major trouble on a question of life or
death in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

The man faces a stark choice.

Continue trading in the failed war-on-drugs rhetoric of the Bush White
House and shut down the Insite safe-injection facility next month,
sending 600-plus addicts back to the alleys of disease and death.

Or heed the harm-reduction pleas of the health-science and business
communities, Vancouver police and three successive city mayors in
renewing Insite's highly successful lease-on-life for addicts who
would otherwise be dying of overdoses or spreading HIV and hepatitis C
from shared needles.

The site is operated by the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority and
Portland Hotel Society, which asked Harper last spring to renew
Insite's three-year exemption from Section 56 of the Controlled Drugs
and Substances Act. The exemption, which expires Sept. 12, allows
users to safely inject prohibited drugs such as heroin and cocaine
under the watch of nurses.

While the deadline fast approaches amidst virtual silence from
Harper's government, the broad Insite-advocacy coalition is hardly
reassured by his negative stance in the past.

During last December's election campaign, Harper said a Conservative
government "will not use taxpayers' money to fund drug use." In May,
the PM said "I'm not committed to it" as he awaited evaluations from
"various agencies, including the RCMP."

It is noteworthy that Harper invoked the RCMP, which opposed the
site's opening three years ago, rather than Vancouver's supportive
municipal police department. The health authority notes the Mounties
have nothing to do with the site, which falls under Vancouver police
jurisdiction.

Health Minister Tony Clement hasn't uttered a peep about Insite, but
past statements, made when he held the health portfolio in Mike
Harris's hard-right Ontario Tory regime, put him in the same league as
ex-B.C. Reform MP Randy White, the most reactionary of all
harm-reduction critics.

Clement said he was "appalled" when a Commons committee recommended
safe-injection trials in 2002, promising to fight them "every step of
the way." He described the term safe-injection site as an "oxymoron,"
was "against people polluting their bodies in whatever form that
takes" and claimed there was no evidence the sites worked.

Clement surely can't make that claim today. Numerous peer-reviewed
medical evaluations show that Insite has prevented overdose deaths,
substantially boosted the number of users seeking treatment, cut the
number of addicts shooting up in public, reduced criminal activity,
injection-related infections and hospital visits by addicts, and
greatly reduced needle-sharing that spreads HIV and hepatitis C.

All of that saves the health-care system hundreds of thousands of
dollars. The ultimate bottom line, as health workers say, is that you
can't treat a dead addict.

They know that in Australia, where Harper's new right-wing buddy,
Prime Minister John Howard, runs a conservative government that
permits a successful safe-injection site in Sydney.

Harper and Clement may find it a tough swallow, but common sense
dictates they must abandon failed ideology, renew Insite and expand
the program across B.C. and Canada. Anything less will amount to
state-sponsored manslaughter.