CONSERVATIVES PUT IDEOLOGY BEFORE SAVING LIVES OF DRUG ADDICTS

Study After Study Supports Insite's Value, Yet The Tories Want To Shut It Down

Insite, the medically supervised injection site in Vancouver's
downtown eastside, is a moral test the Conservatives seem determined
to fail.

As a safe, supervised place for intravenous drug addicts to go, the
clinic has saved lives, helped slow down the spread of HIV/AIDS and
Hepatitis C, provided support to mentally ill or homeless drug
addicts, and helped stabilize a large population of addicts in
Canada's poorest urban neighbourhood.

None of this appears to matter to the Conservatives. They are
committed to ideology - drug-taking is bad and anything that makes it
easier is bad even though lives are saved, to the point of trotting
out bogus research to try to shore up their untenable position.

On Monday, the clinic, the only one of its kind in North America,
celebrated five years of success-filled existence. The clinic's
defenders had no time to celebrate. They are in a pitched battle with
Ottawa to maintain this safe haven for some of Canada's most
vulnerable people.

When the clinic was first proposed, a requirement was that rigourous
research be carried out into its effects on the target population and
on the surrounding neighbourhood.

More than 30 peer-reviewed papers have now been published. The
research, which has appeared in some of the world's best peer-reviewed
medical journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, the
British Medical Journal, the Lancet and the Canadian Medical
Association Journal, show that the site and the services it offers
work.

In a single year, more than 1,600 drug addicts were referred into
addiction counselling. Addicts using the site proved more likely to
enter detox programs, with one in five regulars at the centre starting
a detox program.

Out of 500 overdoses at the site over a two-year period, there were no
deaths. Had addicts overdosed outside the site, on the street, they
would likely have died.

Among the addicts helped at the site is a woman the staff have called
Lily, for purposes of publicizing her story. Now in her mid-40s, Lily
suffers the effects of fetal alcohol syndrome and is also mentally
ill. The injection site has become Lily's lifeline as she weans
herself from drugs.

Research into neighbourhood safety found the level of drug-related
crime remained unchanged, except for a sharp drop in the rate of car
break-ins.

Health Minister Tony Clement has dismissed Lily, the people who have
helped her and hundreds of other addicts, the saved lives and the
clinic - on ideological grounds.

He called into question the ethics of health-care professionals
supporting "the administration of drugs that are of unknown substance
or purity potency, drugs that cannot otherwise be legally
prescribed."

At the August meeting of the Canadian Medical Association, Clement
claimed that there was research "questioning of the research that has
already taken place and questioning of the methodology of those
associated with Insite."

A spokesperson for Clement told the National Review of Medicine that
the research Clement was referring to was an opinion piece by Colin
Mangham, president of the Drug Prevention Network of Canada, a private
organization whose past president is former Conservative MP Randy White.

Inserting opinion into a discussion of public policy and calling it
research is reminiscent of all the "What global warming?" studies that
were marched out to try to deny the increasingly undeniable phenomenon
of climate change.

Briefly, Vancouver's injection site seemed to have reached a safe
shore earlier this year when B.C. Supreme Court Justice Ian Pitfield,
in a strongly worded ruling, declared the federal drug laws that made
Insite illegal to operate were unconstitutional. The federal
government appealed the ruling.

The judge ordered the site to remain open for a year to allow time for
the government to rewrite drug laws.

Closing down a safe-injection clinic whose users are in the vast
majority homeless, mentally ill, addicted, impoverished fellow
citizens is a heartless and pointless exercise.

Does Clement think that allowing drug addicts to contract HIV/AIDS or
Hepatitis C is going to discourage their drug-taking? Or just make
them ill?

Clement claims to be acting out of concern for the country's youth,
wanting to set a good example for them. Letting mentally ill
drug-addicts die on the streets of Vancouver is not - let me assure
him of this - a good example for anyone at any age.