ATTACK ON INSITE STUPID AND DESTRUCTIVE

Writing a column means finding some quiet time to let yourself think.

Which is how a morning walk this week in brilliant sunshine turned
into a long and dark reflection on my readiness for civil
disobedience if Ottawa tries to shut down Vancouver's supervised
injection site.

A few of my activist acquaintances have pointed out that I'm not much
for actually showing up at a protest, even when it's an issue I feel
strongly about. I suspect they take that as an indicator that I'm a
bit of an armchair quarterback (even though the truth is that I just
think writing is the more effective protest tool for me).

Still, ever since I heard a retired medical health officer vow years
ago at a Vancouver harm-reduction forum to chain himself to the door
of Insite if that's what it took to prevent its closure, I knew I
felt the same way.

Count me in for a blockade if it comes to that.

I have great faith in our court system to get past the unthinking
politics of the moment.

So my first hope is that the Supreme Court of Canada -which heard
arguments on this issue Thursday -makes mincemeat of the federal
government's attempts to close down the quiet little clinic in the
Downtown Eastside.

But if worst comes to worst, this is an issue that's well worth going
to battle for. Denying life-saving health services to people solely
because you don't like their illness is moralitybased health care. No
democratic, civilized country should be setting foot on that slippery slope.

Back in its early days, Insite was a bold experiment for Canada.
Supervised injection sites were old news elsewhere in the world by
the time Insite opened in 2003, but still an untested and
controversial concept for Canadians to get their heads around. People
understandably had many concerns at the time about what it would mean
to open such a site.

But that was then. Now, we know absolutely that Insite saves lives.
We know that it doesn't increase drug use or public disorder, and
that it helps people connect to services that can get them out of
their addiction entirely. More than 800 people now access Insite in a
typical day.

The federal government of a decade ago was extremely wary about
allowing an exemption to the Criminal Code so that people addicted to
illicit drugs could use them under the watchful eye of nurses at the
clinic. Insite has endured intense scrutiny for eight years as a
condition of being allowed to open.

The facility has passed every test. Some 30 peer-reviewed scientific
studies have examined the impact of Insite. They all found that the
clinic prevents overdose deaths, reduces the transmission of
potentially fatal diseases and helps people connect to treatment for
their addiction.

Other researchers were tasked with gauging the harms Insite might be
inadvertently causing. They didn't find any.

So what's the problem? There isn't one. The current federal
government simply believes -against all scientific evidence -that
harm-reduction strategies encourage people to use drugs.

Never mind that nothing about being addicted is easy, and no amount
of supervised injection sites will ever change that. Never mind that
everybody wins if we get our heads out of the sand and actually
provide services for a terrible, debilitating illness.

Crime drops. Health-care costs fall. Productivity rises. Police are
free to return to the important work of catching criminals rather
than wasting time busting people with addictions. Why would any
government fight against such positive developments?

Court rulings tend to be based on narrow legal arguments, so it's
hard to predict whether the Supreme Court will come down on the side
of all that's right in this particular case. The federal government
is arguing there will be "chaos" if Insite is allowed to remain open
and provinces start making their own decisions around access to illicit drugs.

That sounds like one of those sweeping statements a government trots
out to dress up a specious argument. The time for chaos will be if
Ottawa tries to close the facility.