TOLERATING DRUGS ADMITS DEFEAT

It doesn't matter if it's legalized "red light" districts, making dance
raves "safe" for kids to take drugs, or the latest proposal from Coun.
Kyle Rae to establish a "safe injection room" for intravenous drug
users in Toronto.

To me, the philosophy behind all these proposals is essentially the
same. It's an admission of defeat.

- - We can't stop prostitution, so we say let's decriminalize it.

- - We can't stop kids from taking Ecstasy at raves, so we say let's put
ambulances outside the city-owned Better Living Centre, paid for by
rave promoters, to rush the kids who OD to hospital.

- - We can't stop heroin or other intravenous drug use, so we say let's
put it in a controlled environment, off the streets.

But what are we really saying? We're really saying some people are
beyond saving and we may as well give up.

Even worse is the message we're sending out to those who may be
thinking about experimenting with such vices.

There's no getting around it. If we say we're going to legalize or
turn a blind eye to things we think should be illegal simply because
we can't stop them, then we're tacitly endorsing those activities. We
wouldn't do it with murder, would we?

I remember watching a public television debate years ago on whether
methadone and other alternative drug treatment programs should be
offered to heroin addicts. Whites on the panel, all well-to-do and
famous and who ranged in philosophy from conservative to liberal, were
all for the idea.

But it was the black mayor of a mid-size U.S. city who said the reason
he didn't support such programs - along with proposals to
decriminalize and legalize drugs - was that if you talked honestly
about who was being devastated by drugs in his community, it was
blacks in the inner city, and that what the panelists were saying to
him, albeit with the best of intentions, was that they were ready to
write those people off.

He wasn't. His priority was more cops to drive off the dealers who
were preying on his constituents .

Yesterday, I spoke to Rae about this idea that what he's proposing
really amounts to an admission of defeat. I have to admit that while I
still don't agree with his idea of a safe injection facility for
intravenous drug users - he first saw one on a trip to Frankfurt last
December - he made a strong case.

FRANKFURT GAVE UP

In 1990, when the city of Frankfurt had essentially given up many of
its parks and neighbourhoods to drug dealers, 108 people died of drug
overdoses. But in 1998, four years after the city established the safe
injection room at the local train station, the number of OD deaths had
dropped to 38.

Rae acknowledged that such a facility tends to become a magnet for
drug dealers and other criminals.

But he said even that's preferable to the status quo in Toronto, where
in his downtown ward there are drug deals going on all over the place
at certain city intersections and parks. Even localizing the problem
would be an improvement.

Rae argued the U.S. experience has shown that trying to combat drug
use strictly through law enforcement - even to the point of bribing
major drug-producing nations with billions in foreign aid - hasn't
worked. Better to look at harm reduction methods as well, as Toronto
already has through its needle exchange program in which addicts have
been able to exchange dirty needles for clean ones since 1990.

Rae noted there are cases where drug addicts, supplied with heroin in
a controlled environment, can actually go on to lead productive lives.
And a "safe injection room" would at least give public health staff
the chance to reach addicts directly and encourage and help them to
get off drugs. For all that, Rae admitted he doesn't think council is
ready for his proposal. Not enough people in Toronto yet see the
problem happening outside their doorstep, as his constituents do.

All fair points, but my instincts still tell me it's the wrong
approach. I keep thinking how many baby boomers, who are parents today,
are so quick to argue we should stop panicking about drug use by the
young (say, at raves) because our generation experimented with drugs,
and we turned out okay.

Yes, but the reason we turned out okay was not that we had parents who
told us it was no big deal to them whether we experimented with drugs.
It was because they told us it was wrong, set standards of behaviour
in their (our) homes, and provided a stable environment for us to
return to when we were done experimenting. They sure didn't tell us it
was fine by them if we experimented with drugs in our bedrooms, and
not to worry because if anything bad happened, they'd have an
ambulance waiting outside. Thank heavens.