TIME TO INJECT A LITTLE COMMON SENSE

The hang-'em-high fringe is probably quivering with indignation but it
seems Canada and the U.S. are finally acknowledging their astronomically
expensive war on drugs has flopped.

The same day the Vancouver police chief declared defeat in the battle
against illicit drugs, a top Health Canada official said Ottawa is prepared
to OK clinical trials in which heroin is prescribed to addicts.

"There is a need for research in this area," said Bruce Rowsell, director
of the Bureau of Drug Surveillance, which has responsibility to approve
heroin-maintenance programs.

Once the research plan for a hospital-based trial meets the necessary
criteria, "there is the possibility of it going ahead," he said.

Even the U.S., despite pockets of resistance from groups which would rather
see addicts locked up in jail - where they can get more drugs and contract
HIV - is planning to prescribe heroin to users under carefully supervised
conditions.

"It's a major public health step forward," says Holly Catania, of New
York's Lindesmith Centre, a drug policy institute.

Here in Canada, research officials are equally enthusiastic about the
apparent shift in government attitude towards injection drug users and what
to do about the growing HIV problem.

Injection drug use has become the main risk factor in new HIV infections,
notes Dr. Bryce Larke, medical consultant for HIV/AIDS for the Alberta
government.

"Careful thought and attention has to be given to what might be considered
radical means," he says.

Anyone who thinks this is strictly a B.C. problem had better think again.

While Vancouver junkies love their heroin, injectable cocaine is the drug
of choice in Edmonton and there's a rapidly increasing HIV problem here.

If Ottawa is prepared to allow doctors to prescribe heroin to addicts to
prevent them picking up a potentially fatal illness from street drugs, the
same should go for cocaine.

Because the evidence is clear that criminalizing drug users and throwing
them in jail doesn't work.

Prison - where drugs are plentiful - is a risk factor for acquiring HIV and
studies have shown incarceration doesn't have much deterrent effect.

Isn't it time we got off our moralistic high horse and acknowledged drug
use is a public health problem - not a criminal one?

Or do Canadians not care that we spend over $400 million a year, according
to the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, battling illicit drug use?

"If they can't control drug use (in jail), law enforcement is faced with an
impossible task on the street," says CCSA research associate Dr. Eric
Single.

The statistics are frightening. If you thought AIDS was still a gay
disease, you're wrong.

Half of new HIV cases are now injection drug users who come from all
socio-economic backgrounds.

And it's not just inner-city throwaways who are dying of drug overdoses.

As B.C.'s chief coroner Larry Campbell said this week: "This is coming to a
neighborhood near you, believe me.

"The people I have seen die from this are your neighbors, your brothers,
your sisters, your fathers and your mothers."

Is such a scenario coming to an Edmonton neighborhood near you?

"Not yet," says Stan Houston, infectious disease specialist at University
hospital. But it will.

Even the United Nations has recognized that simple criminalization of drug
users has been a failure.

Delegates at a UN session on the world drug problem last month endorsed a
declaration that the social integration of drug users should be pursued
through education, treatment and rehabilitation.

Critics are bound to rail that all we're doing is giving criminals free
drugs and no sense of responsibility. Addicts will shoot up anyway, of
course.

Even if they have to break into your house or rob the corner store to pay
for their fix.