LETHAL INJECTIONS

Open A Halifax Needle Exchange, Says Lezlie Lowe.

The International AIDS Conference is done. Now the majority of the
world can feel OK about ignoring an epidemic for another two years.

Sounds pessimistic, I know. But I feel pessimistic. And not only
because prime minister Stephen Harper didn't bother to show up at the
conference, held this year in Toronto, but because it seems like
among all AIDS 2006's good work and good news, there are still great
forces out there who believe HIV is first a moral issue and second a virus.

The world still struggles to understand that AIDS prevention is a
health issue and not a matter of judging who's living a proper life
and who is not. That's clear enough in UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS
in Africa Stephen Lewis's keynote speech at the closing ceremonies,
which included a stern rebuke against the "neo-colonialism" of some
developed nations requiring African countries to adhere to
abstinence-only prevention to win funds.

Some things, it seems, never change.

Just before AIDS 2006, I watched the PBS Frontline documentary "The
Age of AIDS" (online at pbs.org/wgbh/pages/ frontline). In it, we see
US government officials, notably Republican senator Jesse Helms,
fighting in 1987 against government funding for proven means of
curbing HIV's reach--needle exchange programs and safer sex education
campaigns.

I see shades of Helms's approach in Stephen Harper's position on
Vancouver's safe injection site, Insite, where injection drug users
can find clean equipment, counselling and a safe place to inject.

Insite estimates it has prevented more than 500 overdose deaths and
has kept scores of used needles off the streets and out of people's
arms. But the clinic's $500,000 per year in federal funding and its
three-year trial exemption from the Controlled Drugs and Substances
Act expires September 12. Harper said during the last election
campaign he was opposed to government support for harm reduction
programs such as Insite. We'll know in the coming weeks whether the
feds will keep Insite going.

My question: where's Halifax's safe injection site?

Mainline Needle Exchange program director Diane Bailey says clients
who come in to the Cornwallis Street centre looking for clean
needles, safer crack use kits or information tell her one is needed.
"They know from the used needles they're finding out on the street."

Mainline's primary funding is stable and comes from the provincial
government. "We're grateful for what we have," she says, "but I can
always do more with more money." "More" could conceivably mean a safe
injection site. "For [us]," Bailey says, "it's health. We do anything
that can reduce the harm to people's health."

The Canadian Medical Association has come out in support of safe
injection sites. So has the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network.
Obviously Health Canada's behind the idea; it's the federal
department facilitating operations at Vancouver's Insite.

"Of course," Bailey says, "you're going to have the people who
believe that if we didn't have these services there wouldn't be as
many drug addicts and that if we didn't distribute safer crack use
kits people wouldn't be smoking crack. But for the people that
support harm reduction, it's positive."

Stephen Harper could learn a thing or two from Stephen Lewis. Because
something Lewis said in his closing ceremony speech about the folly
of abstinence-only AIDS education also applies to the harm reduction
approach to drug use: "Ideological rigidity almost never works when
applied to the human condition."

Perhaps if Harper had bothered to show up at AIDS 2006, he might have
heard what Lewis had to say.