ADDICTS NEED MORE THAN A CLEAN NEEDLE

Thanks to amazing technological advances, we increasingly live in a
push-button society. We're used to instant solutions to complex
problems. You could say we're addicted to them.

That appears to be especially true with Insite, the public injection
site on East Hastings that offers junkies a "safe" place to shoot up
their illegal drugs.

It's a quick fix. But it doesn't fix the hole in the heart most
addicts have. And it doesn't do much about the scourge of addiction
that holds the Downtown Eastside in its thrall. At best, it's a band-aid.

What it has consistently done since opening in 2003 is generate
headlines, especially when our courts join the action -as the Supreme
Court of Canada did last week in trying to decide whether Insite can
keep operating as a provincial health facility, despite Ottawa's opposition.

The issue, of course, isn't simply a legal one. Ideology is strongly
in play here.

Right-wingers who view drug addiction as a matter of personal choice
tend to consider it downright weird that, given limited public health
dollars, taxpayers should be subsidizing an addicts' shooting gallery.
They believe setting up more Insite-type facilities will simply foster
more heroin and other hard drug use.

Left-wingers typically see the provision of injection sites, needle
exchanges and other so-called harm-reduction schemes as a righteous
cause. And they believe anyone who challenges this conviction is
either a "heartless" dinosaur . . . or a Harper Tory.

"Scientific research confirms the facility reduces high-risk
behaviours that lead to the transmission of deadly diseases such as
HIV and AIDS," stated Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson and five former
city mayors last week.

Well, Insite may reduce some highisk behaviours. But, injecting
illegal drugs is hardly healthy and risk-free, wherever it's done.

That said, it's hard not to be moved by the way Insite nurses assist
desperate people who, we're told, might otherwise be dying grim deaths
in dingy alleys.

Mark Townsend, executive director of the Portland Hotel Society, which
runs Insite in partnership with the Vancouver Coastal Health
Authority, is honest enough to acknowledge it isn't the solution to
all downtown drug ills - especially since those it services have often
been taking drugs for years.

"So this is the best we can do," Townsend said from Ottawa Friday. "We
can save people for another day, we can reduce some costs in the
health-care system . . . there isn't a simple solution to these things."

On the other hand, former longtime heroin addict Barry Joneson wants
Insite shut down. He's saddened people don't seem to understand you
have to confront addiction, not coddle it.

"They don't understand the meaning of heartless when it comes to
addiction," Joneson told me Friday. "The very thing that heartless is,
is giving [the addicts] what's killing them."

Both men make good points. But I tend to agree with Joneson that we're
not really helping drug-takers by simply feeding their addiction.

They need a complete physical and spiritual makeover. Which takes time
and struggle.

The sad reality is, though, that finding a quick fix will always be
more politically palatable than seeking a real cure.