DRUG BUST

Trust Allan Rock to glom onto a politically fashionable idea ... 30 years
late. On Wednesday, the Health Minister announced he was prepared to fund a
safe-injection site for drug addicts in Vancouver, and to change the
Criminal Code to make such a den legal, both ideas that are vigorously
advocated by Philip Owen, Vancouver's Mayor. Mr. Rock insists his approval
of a park or shelter in which addicts, principally heroin junkies, can
shoot-up "is not a law enforcement issue." Rather, he says, these addicts
"have lost control of their lives and they have secondary illnesses," such
as HIV/AIDS and hepatitis. It does no good to round them up and jail them,
without also "doing something about the underlying illness of addition."

Mr. Rock is correct insofar as drug addiction is best thought of as a
health problem, rather than a criminal problem. But if his objective is to
help addicts break their habits, facilitating their addictions by providing
safe havens for engaging in heroin and cocaine use will likely do more harm
than good.

Rotterdam Municipal Council in the Netherlands reports that the percentage
of its 15- to 19-year-olds hooked on either heroin or cocaine has nearly
doubled, to about 4%, since the late 1980s, when it began its free-drug,
safe-haven program. Since 1991, when safe-injection sites became common in
the Netherlands, the Dutch Criminal Intelligence Service reports a 25%
increase in drug-related gun murders and a sharp rise in robberies in
neighbourhoods housing one of the 50 official methadone clinics or
injection shelters.

Zurich closed its infamous needle park in 1992, after the police and
citizenry became fed up with public urination and defecation, prostitution,
open sex, panhandling, drug peddling, loud fights and violent crimes. The
addicts were moved to a converted train station, which was closed in 1995
when the problems from the park reproduced themselves.

So far, more than two dozen major European cities have signed the 1994
European Cities Against Drugs declaration opposing safe-injection sites and
free distribution of drugs. Officials from Berlin, Stockholm, London,
Paris, Moscow and Oslo have embraced the principle that "the answer does
not lie in making harmful drugs more accessible, cheaper and socially
acceptable. Attempts to do this have not proved successful." Such
initiatives, in fact, "increase our problems."

Absent the European data, Mr. Rock's enthusiasm for Vancouver's
safe-injection proposal might seem reasonable, or at least worth a try.
Vancouver typically witnesses 300 to 400 overdose deaths a year. But a
failure is a failure, and the empirical evidence demonstrates that
safe-injection sites simply don't work. The best way to turn drug addicts
around is not to give them free drugs -- it is therapy backed up by the
threat of imprisonment.