CRACK-ADDICT SAFE-INHALATION ZONE JUST NUTS

Only Way To Help Addicts Is To Get Them To Quit

The suggestion by Vancouver medical researchers that we should set up
safe-inhalation rooms for crack addicts is, in my view, crackers . . .
but hardly surprising.

For at least 20 years now, the B.C. health establishment, hooked on
the tired old ideology of "harm reduction," has been having a hard
time saying no to the powerful drug lobby in the Downtown Eastside.

But it doesn't take a long visit there for one to see that
harm-reduction approaches, such as handing out free needles and laying
on a so-called safe-injection site for hard-drug addicts, have proved
to be a colossal failure.

We simply have to move on and accept that the only real way to help
people deal with an enslaving addiction to drugs like heroin, cocaine
and crystal meth is to get them to give them up -- as we're
increasingly doing with tobacco.

Ten years ago, while writing an article about Vancouver International
Airport, I visited the cigarette-smoking room they offered travellers
there. Now you're not allowed to smoke anywhere inside the airport.
And virtually all provinces and territories have banned all such
public rooms.

Nevertheless, Vancouver medical researchers remain so smitten with
harm-reduction ideology that they're seriously suggesting we look at
similar rooms for crack smokers -- even though crack remains illegal
in Canada, for what should be obvious reasons.

Why ban smoking rooms for users of legal tobacco while advocating them
for users of illegal crack?

Well, say the researchers in a study published in the Canadian Medical
Association Journal, smoking crack over time puts addicts at increased
risk of contracting HIV. To combat this, they insist we should try
providing them with such "innovative interventions" as "safer crack
kits" and "medically supervised inhalation rooms."

Innovative? Hardly. It was more than 20 years ago that celebrated
former drug addict John Turvey co-founded North America's first needle
exchange to stem the spread of HIV among intravenous drug users.

It drew raves, but it didn't prevent the Downtown Eastside from later
developing one of the western world's highest rates of HIV infection.
Indeed, in 2002, Turvey admitted to me he'd been very naive.

As for crack addicts facing an increased risk of HIV, that's hardly
headline news. They can stay high for days at a time. And they're
obviously not going to be engaging in safe-injection or safe-sex
practices . . . or safe anything.

Dr. Brian Conway, an infectious-disease specialist who's treated
Downtown Eastside HIV patients for the past 10 years, yesterday called
an inhalation room for crack addicts an "extreme" intervention that
probably should be considered only as a last resort.

Conway told me there are many other things that could be done to help
addicts: "There are a number of cognitive therapies for cocaine use
that have been studied extensively in Europe and the United States
that are simply not available here and would be far cheaper per capita
than an inhalation room."

No, the proposal for taxpayer-funded, crack-smoking rooms just doesn't
pass the smell test. In fact, it stinks.