IT'S TIME TO QUIT BEING SO BLINDLY STUPID ABOUT ADDICTIONS

The trouble with drugs is that most of us can use them just fine. The
majority of people who try drugs -- even street drugs -- can quit
using them fairly easily if they need to.

I've come to suspect that fact is why we're still so damn hopeless at
dealing with addiction. We just don't get it. We're a nation of
enthusiastic users that really struggles with the concept that not
everybody has such an easy relationship with drugs and alcohol.

Most of us will drink, drop, smoke or swallow various drugs over our
lifetimes without incident. We'll go hard as teens and less hard as
adults, and we'll quit when the time seems right, for reasons ranging
from the kids getting old enough to notice, the mornings getting
harder to bear or the embarrassment of being 40 and having to buy
marijuana from the kid on the corner.

For those of us so blessed, our drug use remains within our control.
When we want to stop using, we do. We understand addiction exists on a
theoretical level -- thousands of university papers have explored
various aspects of addiction for decades and the reasons people end up
addicted is no real surprise anymore. But to the great detriment of
the poor sods who are among the addicted group, we still can't shake
the feeling that people with addictions simply aren't trying hard enough.

Such lingering and misguided beliefs drive our clumsy and conflicted
actions around addiction. Otherwise, why would we even be having this
ridiculous conversation about closing Vancouver's highly successful
safe-injection site? Why else would treatment and support remain so
elusive throughout B.C.? What else would be the explanation for
leaving profoundly ill people to live -- and die -- on the streets?

I'm a big believer in democracy, but some things can't be left up to
public whim. Issues that will have an impact on the health and
happiness of the population as a whole and on generations to come
cannot be decided on the basis of a political platform.

Stephen Harper's government might want to believe that providing a
safe, clean place for addicted people to use drugs is wrong. But our
drug-addiction strategy can't be about anybody's belief system. It
must focus instead on what are the smart and effective things we need
to be doing.

Public health. Compassion. Keeping the peace. Happy neighbourhoods.
The building of relationships. Take your pick from a couple of dozen
good reasons for having a safe-injection site, for instance. With
Vancouver's site having operated for three years, there are now even
more reasons: Less death; fewer needles lying around; more people
taking part in daily conversations about getting clean. It's working.

Admittedly, the need for safe-injection sites in our cities' cores is
a tragic reminder of our failure as a society. In a connected and
healthy world, we would have responded to the issues underlying
addiction long before we got to the point of herding people into big
clinics to inject drugs.

But what's done is done. Now we're dealing with a new world that
includes large quantities of cheap drugs and a growing underclass
primed by their unhappy lives and family genetics to develop an
addiction to them.

Step one in the plan: Get the politics out of the picture. Whether the
Tories or the Liberals are in power shouldn't make a whit of
difference in how we manage the issues of addiction. If a
safe-injection site is accomplishing what it set out to do, then we
ought to consider it a step in the right direction and move on to the
next challenge. With so much still going wrong on the addiction front,
we don't need to waste time tearing apart successful health services
for irrelevant ideological reasons.

The argument against safe injection sites generally boils down to one
of not wanting to "encourage" drug use. It's a peculiar position to
take in a nation that saturates itself with alcohol, prescription
drugs and gambling, and it makes even less sense in the context of the
sad souls who frequent Vancouver's safe-injection site.

A clinical, brightly lit room where sick and suffering people are
injecting drugs isn't as grim as a grubby little squat full of
sleeping, crying, moaning addicts, but it's still far from an
appealing place to be. Just ask one of the hurting people lined up
waiting for their turn. In terms of setting youngsters straight, it
would be hard to imagine a better intervention than a visit to the
local safe-injection site to see the skinny, abscessed clientele
searching for a vein somewhere on their tired old bodies capable of
withstanding yet another needle.

Most of us will never know what that's like, and that's lucky. But we
owe it to those who struggle with a very different reality to put
aside our opinions for once and get on with doing the right thing.