SAFE INJECTION RULING ABSURD AND DANGEROUS

The B.C. Court Of Appeal Has Taken It Upon Itself To Redefine Health Care
In Canada.

A recent ruling on the legality of Insite, Vancouver's safe injection site
(SIS), shows the court believes that offering destitute drug addicts a
safe place, clean needles and medical supervision so they can inject
themselves with illicitly obtained heroin and cocaine -- the same toxic
drugs that are actively destroying their bodies and their lives -- is a
"health care service."

Further, because Insite offers "health care programs," it must be
classified as a "hospital" that is under the jurisdiction of the
provincial government. As such, the court dismissed the federal
government's challenge to close the injection site.

The court is obviously getting its medical advice from the Jack Kevorkian
Book of Proper Patient Care.

While the rest of the world thinks that health care refers to taking
active steps to ensure health, B.C. now views health care as a service
that, slowly and over time, ensures the physical, psychological and social
destruction of an individual.

But the social devastation that stems from this ruling extends far beyond
individual drug addicts. The federal government's attempts to control the
illicit drug trade will be severely undermined as the court naively turns
a blind eye to the fact that the drugs have been purchased from drug
traffickers with money obtained through criminal activity. Thus, the open
drug trade of the downtown eastside will expand, crime rates will remain
high and criminals will continue to profit.

It's particularly distressing that only one of the three appeal judges had
a problem with this. In a dissenting opinion, Justice Daphne Smith wrote
that the very premise of Insite conflicted with the federal criminal laws
regarding the distribution, sale and use of drugs in Canada and
"eviscerate(s) the efficacy of a criminal law" that seeks to deal with
illicit drug use.

This twisted definition of health care necessarily precipitates a
similarly twisted redefinition of the roles played by service providers
involved with Insite. Medical personnel who were trained to heal now make
do with facilitating -- not treating -- drug addiction in their
"patients," a distinct violation of the medical profession's founding oath
to "first do no harm." The 65 policemen who patrol the area surrounding
the SIS were trained to uphold the law, yet are now prohibited from
charging drug addicts. Instead, they are duty-bound to escort addicts to
the injection site so they can carry out their illegal activities.

The decision by the Appeal Court could also open the door for SIS's to be
established in other centres, so even more Canadians can bear witness to
this bizarre legal and medical circus. The non-profit society that
operates Insite has approached the federal government for a legal
exemption to operate a crack-cocaine inhalation room. Now that the B.C.
courts have ruled that Insite is out of the federal jurisdiction, it's
likely these facilities will soon be available. Given the health care
benefits of such "hospitals," it's a real shame that Vancouver shut down
the opium smoking rooms that, decades ago, were so prevalent in the city.

Insite began as a pilot project in 2003 with a temporary exemption from
federal drug laws. This exemption has been extended several times, but the
current court battle began when the Harper government announced that it
was no longer prepared to facilitate the use of drugs.

A 2008 report by an Expert Advisory Committee estimated that Insite saves
one drug overdose death per year. It reveals that only three per cent of
addicts are actually referred for treatment, despite numerous claims that
Insite serves as a means to interact with addicts and get them into
treatment. Even more disturbing is that only five per cent of drug addicts
use the site; 18 per cent of those account for the vast majority of visits
(86 per cent) and less than 10 per cent use it for all injections. In
other words, taxpayers are spending about $3 million per year to maintain
about one per cent of all downtown addicts in a pharmacological stupor.

Surely our society has the common sense and compassion to do better than
that.

Susan Martinuk's column runs every Friday.