HIV WINNER IN USELESS DRUG WAR

Over the centuries, scientists who dared to challenge rulers of the
day often found themselves in jail. Today, politicians who prefer
ideology over truth just stick their fingers in their ears.

The key statement that emerged from last week's International AIDS
Conference was a declaration asking governments to base their drug
policies on scientific evidence.

So far, about 14,000 people have signed the so-called Vienna
declaration, including Nobel Laureates, former heads of state,
religious leaders and experts in science, medicine and law.

In Canada, five provincial medical officers of health and the Canadian
Public Health Association have endorsed the statement.

So have past presidents of Mexico, Brazil and Colombia, as well as the
wife of the president of Georgia, the deputy chair of the Georgian
parliament and that country's minister of labour, health and social
affairs.

Georgia is one of the hardest hit countries in eastern Europe in terms
of the spread of HIV.

Meanwhile in Mexico, about 23,000 people have been killed since Mexico
launched its anti-drug campaign in 2006.

The drug war is getting more violent in North America as well. But
both the U.S. and Canada have shied away from taking a stand on the
declaration.

Maxine Davis, head of Vancouver's Dr. Peter AIDS Foundation, says she
asked Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq at the AIDS conference if she
agreed clean needles can prevent HIV.

"She repeatedly failed to confirm her support," Davis
says.

If the Canadian health minister can't summon up enough courage to
acknowledge the importance of clean needles in the fight against HIV,
what hope is there for intelligent debate? Reason, it seems, has been
strangled by political intransigence.

The declaration calls for a review of the effectiveness of drug
policies and a science-based public health approach to the harms
stemming from illicit drugs.

It also urges the decriminalization of drug use.

The drug war has wasted billions of dollars, fuelled rising HIV rates
and destabilized entire countries such as Colombia, Mexico and
Afghanistan, the statement points out.

Countless lives have been lost and drug lords are laughing all the way
to the bank. Meanwhile, your taxes are going up to pay for all that
useless drug law enforcement.

"This is something that conservatives should identify with -- lack of
government accountability (and) the wasting of tax dollars," says Dr.
Evan Wood, founder of the Vancouver-based International Centre for
Science in Drug Policy.

"You'd think that (the federal government) would change policy if
there was something that showed that public health can be improved and
tax dollars can be saved."

Each case of HIV costs Canadian taxpayers about $250,000, notes Wood,
who chaired the committee that wrote the Vienna declaration.

"At the end of the day," he says, "any effort to reduce the supply of
drugs has the perverse effect of making it that much more profitable
for someone else."

Wood's centre recently did a review of studies on the effect of drug
enforcement on drug-related violence.

The vast majority of the studies concluded that increased enforcement
leads to greater drug-related violence.

"We're in a fight between science and ideology," says
Wood.

Perhaps it's our politicians -- not our drug addicts -- who should be
in jail.