INJECTING SOME OBJECTIVITY

The emotional controversy surrounding Insite has pretty well quashed
any rational and informed dialogue on legal injection sites.

Too many opponents of the facility couch their opposition in strict
moral and legal terms; ignoring the psychological and physical
realities of addiction.

But supporters seem to be running on blind devotion as well.

As in the cases of same sex marriage, government-run day care, and
Wal-Mart; one's political and philosophical convictions tend to
conscript them into one camp or the other on hot button issues. When
individuals take positions on social issues based on herd mentality,
they rarely take the time to compose and articulate convincing cases.

It's important to recall how much political capital has been invested
in the injection site. The election that saw Larry Campbell and COPE
take over Vancouver City Hall was very much a plebiscite on
establishing such a facility. For many players, Insite "must" succeed.

The tobacco companies have never had difficulty finding research
firms or academics to write reports confirming the harmlessness of
second hand smoke.

So the fact that the "research" to date tends to support the facility
should be considered very tentatively.

Normally, academics are overly cautious when interpreting data. They
tend to resist announcing firm conclusions and typically urge further
research. But such healthy skepticism is in short supply regarding
the preliminary inquiry conducted on Insite.

Anyone with a research background should know that the facility has
not been in operation long enough to be qualified an outright success
or failure. The evaluative research is at a preliminary and
speculative stage at best. Quite simply, it's too early to tell.

Other scholars are claiming that because something similar is doing
well in Switzerland we should open up a string of injection sites in
B.C., and the Fraser Valley in particular, as though we were talking
about expanding a fast food schnitzel franchise. Assuming that what
worked in one jurisdiction will automatically work in another is an
error more typical of first year research students.

But Insite's supporters jubilantly wave these studies about in the
erroneous belief they are proof that the site is a success.

The injection facility was supposed to be more than a clean place to
do drugs (Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan has a backseat in his van for
that). It was to be part of a larger strategy to reduce the numbers
of drug users. But the research thus far is unable to document how
many people, if any, have stopped using intravenous drugs as a
partial consequence of Insite.

Nothing new here. Supporters of the long gun registry insisted it
saved lives despite lacking a single piece of evidence that it
prevented even one homicide.

But objectivity is often a casualty when serious issues become cause celebres.