DEBATE ON DRUG USE WILL GET NOISIER

It's called "harm reduction."

It's a philosophy.

Its nature -- if I read it right -- is a tacit admission that the old
strategies to deal with drug addiction have not worked.

And on Tuesday, when a contact leaked me a report to the Vancouver/Richmond
health board proposing four "safe-injection sites" for drug addicts in the
Downtown Eastside, there, on the report's first page, was this lead
paragraph describing harm reduction:

"As a strategy, harm reduction establishes a hierarchy of goals that range
from reducing the immediate harm associated with use of consumption to
abstinence . . . "

Odd, isn't it, how that sentence just trails off. Why, one wonders, does
that sentence end with an ellipsis?

Maybe it has something to do with the next sentence that -- slyly?
conveniently? absent-mindedly? -- the author of the draft report omitted.
The paragraph quoted above is from a health-board report on harm reduction
tabled last January. The next sentence -- the one replaced by the
ellipsis -- reads:

"For example, this hierarchy can range from a simple willingness to treat
individuals currently using drugs or alcohol, encouraging 'safe practices'
and providing clean needles and condoms to support for decriminalization or
legalization."

It takes a while for that sentence to get to what it really means, as if it
has to creep up on its quarry so as not to scare the horses.

But there it is, in the last clause:

" . . . support for decriminalization or legalization."

The safe-injection-site report, of course, wouldn't use the word
"legalization." The Good Folks of the city would freak.

But that's what the health-board proposal for safe injection sites is
talking about -- four islands of legalized drug use afloat upon a hostile
sea. Four shooting galleries-cum-coffee bars where intravenous drug users
can indulge in their stimulant of choice -- coke or caffeine.

The health board even went about getting a legal opinion on the proposal, in
the event that someone might notice the discrepancies inherent in this
discriminatory form of legalization. That is, why would it be okay for a
coke addict to enjoy their jollies in the privacy of a backroom booth of the
safe-injection sites (isn't that a wonderful bureaucratic euphemism?) when
the weekend pot smoker or grower will still get their butts busted by the
police? How do the authorities justify that discrepancy?

By jumping through a series of legal hoops. The draft proposal cites a legal
opinion from lawyer Linda Parsons of Davis & Company. It reads:

"The preliminary report indicates the federal minister has the authority to
exempt any person or class of persons or any controlled substance from the
application of all or any of the provisions of the federal Controlled Drugs
and Substances Act and the Act's Narcotic Control Regulations if, in the
opinion of the minister, the exemption is necessary for a medical or
scientific purpose, or is otherwise in the public interest. Furthermore the
provincial Hospital Act allows a non-profit institution to be designated a
hospital by the minister. It may be possible for a facility to be designated
a hospital for the purposes of therapeutic drug administration."

Hey, let's declare the entire Downtown Eastside a hospital and say the hell
with it!

But seriously, the import of the above legal opinion is not so much what it
says but that the health board is so far along in its consideration of
legalization that it felt the need to seek out a legal opinion.

I'm not a fan of conspiracy theory, but even I wondered at the string of
events that, in January, saw a report on harm reduction tabled at the health
board; that, in May, saw the health board and the provincial government buy
the fleabag Sunrise and Washington hotels for addict and HIV/AIDS housing;
that, in July, saw a committee struck by the health board to propose
solutions to the high number of overdose deaths in the Downtown Eastside;
and finally that, in September, saw the Sunrise and Washington hotels
proposed as safe- injection sites.

Do these events have a planned sequence? Hell, I don't know. But I do
believe that, very quietly, the health board has brought the debate on drug
treatment to a new point.

I think the debate is about to get a little noisier.

Pete McMartin can be reached at pmcm@pacpress.southam.ca or at 605- 2905.

Checked-by: Don Beck