VICTORIA NEEDS A LITTLE INSITE

Harper's Hardline Approach To Drugs Threatens To Kill Safe-Injection
Site In Vancouver

Victoria Mayor Alan Lowe is still talking bravely about a
safe-injection site for the region's addicts, but even optimists must
be losing hope. Prime Minister Stephen Harper, whose government's
co-operation would be necessary, isn't at all keen about the idea,
and might even put Vancouver's pioneering facility, Insite, out of business.

Ottawa has been funding Insite since September 2003 as a three-year
pilot project. It's the first government-sanctioned shooting gallery
in North America, and has detractors both in Canada and especially in
the U.S., where drug-enforcement authorities see it as a threat to
the American way of life.

Harper stated during the last election campaign where he stands: "We
as a government will not use taxpayers' money to fund drug use. That
is not the strategy we will pursue."

So when the federal funding for Insite runs out in September,
Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan doesn't expect it to be renewed. But he
says he'll be asking the federal government at least to avoid putting
any barriers in the way of keeping Insite open or any other
innovations the province and municipal governments might come up with
to deal with drug addiction.

That would mean continuing Ottawa's policy of exempting patrons and
operators of the Vancouver safe-injection site from prosecution under
the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, since addicts are using
illegal drugs to shoot up.

This is a pretty black-and-white issue. Those who oppose
safe-injection sites consider people who use illegal drugs criminals;
those who support them consider addiction a health issue and
supervised clinics for addicts a way to prevent disease and save lives.

At one extreme, we have Real Women, which makes the charge that
Health Canada is planning methodically to approve injection sites
across the country for a "startling and sordid" reason -- to make
legal all mind-altering drugs by "normalizing" their use.

The organization says the facilities increase heroin use and the
market for it, attract drug pushers, reward international criminal
drug cartels -- including Osama bin Laden's -- by using their illicit
substances, and cause an increase in crime by addicts. It argues,
instead, for forcing addicts into detoxification and rehabilitation
programs, with jail terms for those who refuse.

At the other extreme is Norm Stamper, a retired Seattle police chief,
who's on a speaking tour of western Canada to tell legislators,
judges, cops -- anyone who'll listen -- that there's a hunger in our
society for mood- and mind-altering drugs that won't go away, and
governments shouldn't be able to tell us what we can put into our bodies.

Regulation and control of drug use, through such things as
safe-injection sites, Stamper says, is preferable to the so-called
War on Drugs that has been unable to stop an increase in drug
availability and use, discriminates against visible minorities and
the poor, encourages criminal activity and risks police corruption.

Vancouver's Insite has drawn the same conflicting reaction
internationally. The UN's International Narcotics Control Board
called it "a grave concern" that violates international drug
conventions requiring that controlled substances be used only for
medical or scientific reasons.

But the European Union's Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug
Addiction found that Insite and other safe-injection sites -- the
first opened in Berne in 1986 -- attract long-term and "hard to
reach" addicts, decrease exposure to infectious diseases, decrease
risk-taking, provide immediate help in case of overdose and reduce
overdoses in the community. And, the centre reported, so long as
municipal authorities and police are consulted, they do all this
without increasing public disorder.

Medical journals -- Canadian, American and British -- have published
research showing Insite has reduced in-public injections and related
litter in the Downtown Eastside, has attracted users most at risk of
HIV infection and overdose, and has reduced needle-sharing among
high-risk users.

The Canadian Medical Association Journal reported in September 2004,
a year after the Vancouver facility opened, that there had been no
increase in the number of drug dealers in the vicinity. It said it
will take "several years" to evaluate Insight's overall health
impacts, but its experience should be valuable for other urban areas
where public drug use is a problem -- like Victoria.

There were 197 overdoses among 116 clients at Insite between
September 2004 and August 2005 -- any of which might have been fatal
elsewhere. During that period about four clients were referred to
addiction treatment each day and nearly two a week to methadone
treatment. Others, who might otherwise not seek medical care, were
referred to St. Paul's Hospital and community health services.

Obviously, real people with real problems are being helped, whether
or not they kick the habit for good. The Vancouver Coastal Health
Authority calculates that if it costs $150,000 to treat an HIV
patient over a lifetime, preventing 10 people from contracting HIV
means Insite pays for itself.

Harper's unyielding legal stand must not be allowed to jeopardize
what Lowe is convinced is a promising medical solution to an urban
social problem across Canada.

Victoria could use a little Insite, too.