SAFE-INJECTION CRITICS BLIND TO BACK-ALLEY REALITY

What an awful hue and cry we heard from the forces of yesteryear when
Vancouver's safe-injection site opened.

Correction. When Canada's and even North America's first safe-injection site
opened, joining 59 others in 33 cities in Europe and Australia.

The others have proven successful in reducing overdose deaths, disease,
crime, and generally improving the afflicted neighbourhoods.

All of this falls under the banner of harm reduction. The Vancouver site
will be monitored by Health Canada over several years to gauge its success.

This is tremendously welcome news, an overdue recognition that the old
bust-based war on drugs is as hopeless as alcohol Prohibition was in the
1920s.

But not to the forces of yesteryear, heads buried deep in Jericho Beach.

You won't hear them talk much about the successes at other safe-injection
sites around the globe. A snort of derision is more likely.

Now why is that? Why are the naysayers so afraid to admit that the war on
drugs as we've known it is a flop?

Why are they so comfortable with injection-drug addicts contracting HIV or
hepatitis C in some dirty, pathetic back alley -- or dying of an overdose --
than be given a chance to live and make contact with health professionals?

I'm afraid what we have here is a bad morality play rooted in the juvenile
notion that only abstinence, tough love, more police and methadone clinics
will solve the problem. It will not.

The naysayers do a grave disservice to the truth when they haughtily dismiss
the initiative as "state-sponsored addiction" or a waste of tax dollars.

Overwrought White House drug czar John Walters is the worst offender of all;
he calls the Vancouver site "state-sponsored personal suicide."

Seems to me the "state-sponsored suicide" occurred over the last decade,
when authorities smugly sat on the sidelines while 1,200 people died of
overdoses in Vancouver.

That's right, "people" -- real human beings with real, grieving families.
This is not some virtual-reality game being played out on prime-time
television.

Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell knows. As provincial coroner, he counted
hundreds of overdose victims.

So does Downtown Eastside proponent Ann Livingston: "It's saying you the
user are a human being and deserve to be treated like one, not just die in
an alley."

The few tax millions spent on the site pale in comparison to the staggering
health costs of HIV and hep-C infection.

"We have to talk about [illegal drugs] as a health issue and not as a moral
issue," adds Liberal MP Paddy Torsney.

Another MP, Vancouver East's Libby Davies, and her NDP colleagues deserve
special thanks for tirelessly promoting updated solutions to an old problem.

If only the forces of yesteryear would do the same, instead of recycling
tiresome hostility and destructive myths.