EVIDENCE SHOULD TRIUMPH OVER IDEOLOGY ON NEEDLE EXCHANGE

Imagine kicking our politicians out of office for a while and
replacing their cowardice and ideological stubbornness with the
evidence-based, straight thinking of experts.

Pot would have been legalized long ago. Perhaps a regime would have
been set up for the legal regulation and sale of all drugs based on
their potential harm.

Drug addiction would be considered a health problem, not a criminal
matter. And people who got into trouble with the law because of
addiction would end up in treatment centres, not prison.

It's a fantasy, of course. I can't imagine that dramatic a change in
thinking about drug policy by any political party in my lifetime. We
are too mired in the prohibitionist mindset. So the impossible war on
drugs continues.

But one small step towards compassion and reason would be nice. There
are needle exchange programs across Canada.

Yet there are no needle and syringe programs in our prisons, which are
full of society's castoffs - many of them addicts.

It makes no sense medically or financially to refuse inmates clean
needles. If there are none, they'll use whatever's at hand to get
their fix, notes a new report by the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network.

The report includes chilling commentaries from 50 people who have been
behind bars. Many of them said they knew they could get infected by
sharing needles but they did it anyway, in their desperation to get
high.

"I never wanted to share a needle; I didn't choose to share,"
explained an Edmonton man. "But when you need to get a hit and you
don't have a rig, you end up sharing."

He estimated that about 80% of the time he was injecting, he was
sharing needles. He matter-of-factly described using a makeshift rig
out of a Q-tip, masking tape, Bic pen and a piece of gum while he was
in a B.C. prison.

"I know that 30 or 40 people would share one syringe. Sometimes there
was only one syringe in the whole jail and you would have to pay to
use it," added a Toronto man. "I've seen six guys use a single syringe
without cleaning it."

Yes, it's insane. We care enough about public health to support needle
exchanges in the broader community but we don't give a hoot about inmates.

Treating someone in prison with HIV costs about $30,000 a year. It's
clearly far more cost-effective to provide inmates with clean needles
and syringes, the report says.

"The goal of this report is to supplant this apathy with empathy,
ideology with evidence, and inertia with action," declares the Legal
Network.

One former inmate recalled that a fellow prisoner lost an arm because
of a dirty needle.

"The needle he was using was just filthy. He knew it, too, . but he
continued to use this needle and they had to amputate his arm."

Why should we care about trying to prevent the transmission of HIV or
hepatitis C behind bars?

Well, for one thing, infected prisoners eventually get out of jail,
use up hospital beds and eat up precious health-care dollars.

"What happens in the correctional system doesn't stay in the
correctional system," points out Dr. Stan Houston, a U of A Hospital
infectious diseases specialist. "It comes back to the community."

There's not a shred of evidence that providing clean needles to
addicts increases drug use in the community, he adds.

"The message (the Tories) are sending is that they don't care very
much about the health of (inmates)."

Houston isn't confident that evidence will triumph over ideology.
Unfortunately, neither am I.