DRUG FACTS

Your editorial A Pillar Too Far, (Nov. 22) argues that providing safe
injection rooms, free housing and heroin for Vancouver's drug addicts goes
too far -- in effect undermining Mayor Philip Owen's drug strategy. But
Mayor Owen is simply keeping his eye on the ball while your editorial
misses the game completely.

Whatever we think about drug abuse, or drug abusers, the brute facts are
that HIV and Hepatitis C are spread through needle sharing -- and these
blood-borne infections are orders of magnitude more costly to treat and
more threatening to public health than addiction to heroin or cocaine. That
is because they reach beyond the drug user to innocents with whom drug
users inevitably come into contact. Drug addiction harms only the addicted.

Mayor Owen's strategy -- which is copied from the successful Dutch, Swiss
and German harm-reduction models -- simply acknowledges that transmission
of HIV and hep-C are the greater dangers to public well-being. It may be
worth attracting drug users from other parts of the province, and even the
country, if it enables health professionals to contain the spread of HIV
and Hep-C. The status quo "drug war" strategy only exacerbates problems
associated with drug use. Let's try the European strategy. If it makes the
situation worse, we can always return to what isn't working now.

Harm reduction, which is the principle underlying the Mayor's strategy,
keeps its eye on the ball. Your editorial, to change metaphors, misses the
boat.

Craig M.F. Jones, Ph.D, Kingston, Ont.