CLEMENT TELLS IT LIKE IT IS ON INSITE

It was the roar heard across the country.

Earlier this week federal Health Minister Tony Clement had the
audacity to question the ethics of doctors, who have been blind
proponents of "harm reduction" strategies for drug addicts.

No common criticism in some local paper from the Dark Prince of Parry
Sound. Oh no, Mr. Clement walked right into a packed room of MDs
before the Canadian Medical Association, and let fly. He popped open
his briefing book and let the collective harm reduction lobby have it
- right between the eyes.

What hubris!

Outrage from many doctors ranged from ear-steaming vitriol to the kind
of dismissive pretense that would leave Marie Antoinette labouring in
wonder.

According to the doctors present, you and I should not be all too
approving of Tony the Tyrant.

Well, I agree.

You shouldn't be simply enthused.

Instead, you should stand on your chairs and cheer at the top of your
lungs. You should embrace your neighbour in joy, knowing that the
Canadian Minister of Health, Tony Clement, fully understands the
manure we've been fed for several years now by the harm reduction lobby.

You should pump your fists in the air in celebration that there is at
least one politician in this country who grasps the scourge that is
addiction.

As Canadians who care about what kind of future we will leave to our
children, you should take from Minister Clement's resounding boldness
and inspiring courage, that the Conservative government of this
country appreciates the problems related to addiction, and, unlike 10
years of Liberal government dithering and navel-gazing, the Tories, at
least, are prepared to do something about it.

Never mind the deceit being shovelled in your direction: The Tories
want to jail addicts; they want to let the American Drug Enforcement
Agency into Canada (they've been here by the way, since the Chretien
years); they are heartless ... cough, spit, choke and spit again.

Horse feathers.

Harm reduction strategies in this country have been manipulated to
create a whole new industry for the proponent doctors to have and to
hold, forever and a day, while addicts run proverbial treatment
treadmills like the guinea pigs they've become.

Never mind what you might read in The Vancouver Sun (they've had it
wrong from the beginning). We've never had Four Pillars in this city,
ever.

Only one Pillar, harm reduction, at a location we've come to know as
Insite - a "safe" haven where addicts can shoot up. But how safe?
Housed in the same building, one floor above is a "pre-tox" facility
called Onsite, where addicts are presumably coming down off the hell
in their veins.

So, 15 feet from where addicts are trying to supposedly rid themselves
of their demons, others are getting their fill. Make sense to you?

Of course not. In the drug treatment business, it's called a 'trigger'
and considered verboten. But you don't hear this from Mark Townsend,
whose Portland Hotel Society landlords this charade. All you hear is
the kind of expedient lather that springs political and stays that
way.

At the beginning of the year, when the top drug addictionologists in
this province wrote an article in the B.C. Medical Journal condemning
Sam Sullivan's CAST - another harm reduction fantasy - the mainstream
press ignored them.

The exploitation of Mr. Clement's salient comments notwithstanding, he
is an advocate for treatment, prevention and education - the three
missing Pillars. So where's the problem, you say?

It's with the proponents of harm reduction hocus pocus. The sucking
sound becoming fainter and fainter, thankfully ... no more teat to
milk tax dollars from.

Real treatment.

Real compassion, too.

Tony Clement is a damned hero.