THE HARPER GOVERNMENT IS FIGHTING THE WRONG FIGHT WITH
INSITE

On Friday, the B.C. Court of Appeal shot down the federal government's
attempt to close Insite, the controversial safe injection site in
Vancouver's Downtown East side. While one would think that should put
an end to the dispute, I'm guessing that by the time you read this,
the Harper government will have a petition filed in the Canadian
Supreme Court.

The site opened in 2003 as part of a multi-pronged program launched by
former Mayor Philip Owen that included harm reduction as well as drug
enforcement. The concept is simple: give intravenous drug users a safe
place to shoot up, clean needles and health care services, and you can
reduce the spread of infectious diseases and deaths by overdose.

It's pretty easy to die of a narcotic overdose, especially when you're
never sure of the quality of the drugs you're injecting. If you OD,
however, there is a window of time where an injection of Narcan will
save your life. Get it soon enough, you recover quickly. But too late
is too late.

Over the past six or so years, the front line workers at Insite have
proven that the safe injection concept works. Somewhere in the
process, trained health care professionals can make one-on-one contact
with addicts, and help get them off the street.

Unfortunately, harm reduction programs don't always sit well,
politically, especially on the right side of the spectrum. It's ironic
that Philip Owen, representing the conservative Non Partisan
Association, was shoved aside by his own party before his reforms came
into being. One sensed that his progressive views on drug addiction
were a factor in his political demise.

But the current legal wrangling raises red flags on both sides of the
debate. If you support Insite, then you naturally feel that the courts
have upheld the principles of our Canadian constitution. If you
believe that harm reduction equates to condoning and promoting drug
use, then you probably feel like a gang of activist judges has just
hijacked the democratic process: your elected representatives have
created a law, and unelected judges have scuttled it. Obviously, if
you're on the winning side, you're happy, but you might be sitting on
the wrong side of the fence next time.

Then again, you might view the conflict as a defining argument of
federal versus provincial powers. Health care is, after all, a
provincial responsibility. But drug enforcement laws fall under the
federal Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. Somehow, when the smoke
clears, we may have a better idea of where the lines are drawn between
the competing jurisdictions.

Whatever happens with Insite will have a spillover effect in the
Valley. We may not have a safe injection site, but we have other harm
reduction initiatives, like a needle exchange program, in place.

A couple of decades into the age of HIV/AIDS, it's unfortunate that
we're still dealing with ideological arguments about whether or not we
should tolerate the use of drugs, because that boat sailed a long time
ago.