IT'S THE DRUG WAR, STUPID

It's the government-sponsored Drug War that brings most of the ills
that harm reduction can barely contain

Vancouverites wanted something done about drug addiction. A potent
mixture of fear and compassion had the citizens determined to find a
solution to the menace that was afflicting larger and larger portions
of the society, including youth from well-to-do homes. A large NGO
established a committee to study the problem, and the doctor in charge
made a number of recommendations. Dr Lawrence Ranta recommended a
pilot medical treatment centre for addicts and a citywide educational
campaign regarding the dangers of drug addiction. More
controversially, the doctor recommended that the federal government
establish narcotic clinics where registered narcotic users could
receive required drugs.

When did this happen? Was it in 2002, with Larry Campbell in the
Mayor's chair? Or was it in the 1990s, after compassionate-conservative
Mayor Philip Owens converted to the cause of harm reduction? Neither.
Dr Ranta wrote his recommendations 56 years ago, in 1952, for the
Vancouver Community Chest, the predecessor of the United Way.

Harm reduction, an approach which tries to mitigate the worst effects
of drug addiction, is more than half a century old in Vancouver. It
includes a large number of strategies: medical outreach by "street
nurses," provision of clean needles, a single site where drug users
can inject heroin, education on drug use, treatment centres for users,
methadone substitution treatment, "drug courts" for long term addicts,
and personal counseling for drug users. Undoubtedly, each of these
programs does lessen the medical, criminal and emotional problems
associated with addictions. But here we are, closing in on six decades
after Dr Ranta made his then-radical recommendations, and little has
changed in Vancouver. Meanwhile, Vancouver addicts continue to suffer
disease, incarceration, poverty, shortened lives, personal isolation
and social stigma.

Why? Put simply, harm reduction deals with the symptoms of the
problem, not the problem itself. The spread of HIV and Hepatitis C is
a problem. Gang warfare is a problem. The endless petty crime sprees
of drug addicts are a problem. The mass incarceration and
criminalization of a large portion of our population is a problem. The
power of the police to stop and search thousands of people annually in
Vancouver is an affront to personal liberty.

But these problems are created by a much bigger problem: the Drug War.
The government-sponsored war prohibiting the use of a few drugs
designated as illicit propels each of the ills listed above. The Drug
War itself is the root problem.

The endless chatter about harm reduction may serve to hide the reality
on the ground. A search of the Vancouver Public Library's "Canada
Newstand" (ProQuest) search engine, which includes most of Canada's
large dailies and many of the nation's community papers, yields 1,298
hits for "Vancouver" and "Harm Reduction," 1,236 hits for "Vancouver"
and "Insite," and 564 hits for "Vancouver" and "Four Pillars," but
only 297 hits for "Vancouver" and "Drug War." Alas, the latter
overwhelmingly concerns reports of drug gang warfare, not articles
reporting on the endless government-sponsored Drug War, which is much
more damaging.

The harm reduction discussion is so loud that many Vancouverites
believe that we've moved beyond the Drug War to a more enlightened
drug policy. Many believe harm reduction comes first in Vancouver and
supersedes policing and the criminalization of drug users. Nothing
could be further from the truth. Vancouver is the home of the Drug
War. Go to the City web site and read the Vancouver Police
Department's Annual Reports. In 2002, the VPD arrested 2,926 people on
drug charges, in 2005, they arrested 4,503, and in 2007, the number
jumped to 5,034 arrests. This is a rise of 58% over the five year
period from 2002 to 2007. And many of the other crimes that VPD deals
with-break and entry, car theft, beatings, murders-are also indirectly
caused by the Drug War.

In addition, many of the harm reduction "solutions" are themselves
suspect. I gagged listening to the CBC singing laurels to a local
physician who prescribes methadone to addicts. Methadone is a terrible
drug to detoxify from, far worse than heroin. The only positive thing
you can say about methadone is that having a prescription can remove
an addict from the frontlines of the Drug War (though many methadone
users also use illicit drugs). Meanwhile the CBC is making this
extremely well-paid doctor sound like Mother Theresa.

The "drug courts" are also much celebrated. The drug courts are an
invasion of privacy and place addicts under constant and intrusive
surveillance by teams of legal, medical and social work professionals.
The addicts have little recourse for any grievances they may have with
the process. These courts are a totalitarian solution, a solution that
is worse than the problem.

No reasonable person could argue against such harm reduction
initiatives as Insite, the distribution of services and medical
supplies like clean needles to addicts, but the attention focused on
harm reduction misleads people into thinking the government-sponsored
Drug War is winding down. The poverty, loss of civil liberties, mass
incarceration, spread of disease, homelessness and personal and social
isolation of addicts will only stop when the Drug War stops.