PRESCRIPTION HEROIN IS WORTH CONSIDERING

Mayor Larry Campbell wants Vancouver to consider prescribing heroin and
cocaine to a few hard-core addicts. His inspiration is a Swiss program that
serves 1,169 heroin users through 21 centres in Switzerland.

It's understandable that some would see Mayor Campbell's proposal as just
one more step toward hell -- another swatch in a fabric of moral decline
that includes easier access to alcohol and decriminalized marijuana.

Yet these issues are quite separate.

Alcohol creates serious social costs, but we've agreed as a society to
accept its use. We create social expectations regarding its consumption
(increasingly effective with drunk driving), but we also believe we
shouldn't micro-manage adult access to alcohol.

It's a difficult balance to strike, but we manage better than we did under
prohibition. It was hard to create effective social strictures surrounding
the use of alcohol when you'd already stepped outside the bounds of law to
take any drink at all.

And that has been one of the problems with marijuana. It's used by judges
and lawyers, policemen and politicians, doctors and school teachers. For
many teenagers marijuana is more accessible than alcohol, which requires
proper ID and proof of age to buy. Yet society defines marijuana's use as
criminal, effectively scuttling any attempt to create social strictures
that could limit the damage its distribution and use cause to people's
health and safety.

Most British Columbians have accepted marijuana as a social intoxicant. Our
laws will eventually catch up with public opinion and practice, and in time
we will create stronger social strictures regarding its use. Moral order
will not collapse with decriminalization or legalization.

Heroin and cocaine are different. These drugs are generally used on
society's margins, and a huge majority of us don't accept them. The damage
they cause -- AIDS, hepatitis C, overdoses, addiction, crime -- is out of
control. We've failed utterly with existing strategies to bring these
problems under control.

Safe-injection sites and prescription heroin do not tell addicts it's okay
to use drugs. But they do create points of contact for socially isolated
people where they come into contact with others who can tell them it's not
okay to use these drugs, and can help them stop when they're ready to do so.

If they can't stop -- and those who have coped with addiction know how
difficult that is -- we will at least help them reduce the damage they do
to themselves and society at large.

This newspaper has urged our political leaders to action on developing
safe-injection sites, as part of a comprehensive strategy that also
includes increased enforcement, treatment and education.

Our city is ready for that.

Prescription heroin programs are not something that we have discussed as a
community. A discussion is welcome, and we're glad Mayor Campbell has
raised the issue. He does so despite the potential political cost. Just ask
former mayor Philip Owen.

There are many potential benefits to prescription heroin, not the least of
which is cutting out both dealers and the property crime committed by the
hard-core users who might be served by such a program.

But right now the priority shouldn't be more talk; it should be action on
other fronts. The city's "four pillars" strategy has been in development
for five years.

Safe injection sites are just a small part of that strategy. There is a
great deal of other work that needs to be done, improving treatment,
strengthening enforcement and teaching those at risk that addiction to hard
drugs puts them on a slippery slope to a place none of us wants to visit.

That's why we favour safe injection sites -- and why we want to discuss
prescription heroin. We want people addicted to heroin and cocaine to have
a better chance of stopping, and we want the carnage the drugs create to be
curtailed.