DRUG PLAN COULD ENABLE ADDICTS AND PROLONG ADDICTION

Health officials are gearing up to give drug addicts more reason to prolong
their habit while they continue to underfund the other side of the equation
- -- abstinence.

The Vancouver Coastal Health Authority is looking at adding to the Downtown
Eastside needle exchange program -- the largest in North America -- with
the corresponding distribution of safe inhaling materials to crack smokers
in the area. Studies suggest their numbers have increased by 22 per cent in
the past five years.

The free kit would contain rubber tubing that addicts would slip onto the
tips of their crack pipes to reduce lip infections and burns.

Officials assert that the as-yet unknown public cost of distribution is
justified as a component of Vancouver's overall disease and infection
reduction program which includes the city's pending supervised injection
site and the 2.7 million needle swaps last year.

Attempting to reduce health problems such as contracting HIV and hepatitis
C linked to drug use is a laudable goal, and one taxpayers should eagerly
support. But only when health authorities recognize the need for parallel
detox and rehabilitation centres and drug free housing outside the
dope-saturated downtown area.

Anything short of a comprehensive program to clean up and clear out the
open junk market in the seedy corner of the city merely enables the addict
and validates the addiction.

But the Coastal Health Authority doesn't get it. Statistics indicate there
are between 10,000 and 15,000 hardened heroin and cocaine addicts in the
city for less than 50 treatment beds.

It's always been this way, and there are no plans to change it.

"There is often a fine line between harm reduction and 'enabling' or
facilitating a continued addiction," wrote Dr. Stanley de Vlaming, an
addictions consultant who has treated thousands of the city's dependents.

He called it the concept of killing someone with kindness.

"Harm reduction done poorly can actually increase harm...the same amount of
money directed at treatment for the severely addicted would save more lives."

Our first priority should be to curb drug abuse, not condone it.