GETTING SMART ON DRUG POLICIES

The Harper government should halt its destructive legal effort to
deny health care to people with addictions.

The Conservatives want to close the Vancouver supervised injection
site for drug users. Insite, operated by the Vancouver Coastal Health
Authority, requires a federal exemption from drug possession laws to
operate, so people can bring drugs to the centre.

The government refused to renew Insite's exemption in 2008. That
decision was challenged in the B.C. Supreme Court, which found that
forcing the centre to close would violate the clients' charter rights
to "life, liberty and the security of the person."

The federal government appealed that ruling. And now the B.C. Court
of Appeal has also found, in a 2-1 decision, that the centre provides
an essential health service and should remain open.

Many people are troubled by the idea of a safe injection site. They
fear it signals support for intravenous drug use or causes unspecified harm.

But the reality is that the site -- and other harm reduction efforts
like needle exchanges -- are health services that reduce care costs,
assist some people with managing addiction and cut urban disorder.

The B.C. Supreme Court defined the issues. The two key questions were
whether shutting Insite would violate the users' charter rights; and,
if it did, whether that was justified in the interests of the community.

Both sides presented evidence. The federal government established
that a scientific debate continues about the most effective ways to
respond to drug addiction.

But the court found the evidence showed that allowing people to
inject in a clean, supervised site reduced death and illness.

Addiction is an illness, the court found, and removing the centre
would violate the clients' right to personal security, just as
denying care to a lung cancer patient would.

The judgment dealt with another issue critical to our approach to
drug use. The federal government's lawyers argued that people choose
to use drugs. The charter of rights doesn't provide protection
against bad choices, they maintained.

Justice Ian Pitfield reviewed the medical evidence provided by both
sides and he found Insite users weren't making a choice to inject
drugs. "However unfortunate, damaging, inexplicable and personal the
original choice may have been, the result is an illness called
addiction," he found. Services that reduce the damage caused by their
condition are part of health care. "Society does that for other
substances such as alcohol and tobacco," he noted.

Our drug policy has been a colossal, costly failure. Addiction has
increased; the damage done to individuals and society has grown more
severe; and our approach has created a vast increase in organized crime.

And all the while, we have largely continued the same failed
initiatives. That is, in large part, because policies have been
shaped by ideology, politics and prejudice, rather than evidence and facts.

We can't keep on doing this. The failures of more than 50 years of
drug policy have done enormous harm to our communities. Despite
billions of dollars spent on enforcement, the situation is now worse
than it has ever been.

The Harper government is considering an appeal of the latest decision
to the Supreme Court of Canada. That would waste time and money.

There are few easy answers to the challenges of drug use and
addiction. But we know what has worked -- things such as Insite,
community court programs, effective education and access to
treatment. And we certainly know what has failed.

It's time for governments to remove the ideological blinders and deal
with drug use as a health and social policy issue.