ADDICTS WILL DIE IF INJECTION SITE CLOSES

Insite Court Challenge Based on Conservative Ideology

While B.C. is experiencing an epidemic of heroin overdose deaths, the
federal government is using our tax dollars to mount a Supreme Court
challenge in an attempt to close down Vancouver's pioneering Insite
supervised injection centre. This is a move that combines ideological
bone-headedness with moral and fiscal stupidity. Our tax dollars are
being wasted on an attempt to destroy a clinical model that saves
lives, fights addiction without punishing addicts and reduces public
outlays on emergency medicine and law enforcement.

Extra strength heroin has killed nearly three times as many people in
B.C. this year as last. Already this year the province has recorded 21
overdose deaths, in contrast to eight such deaths last year. More are
predicted.

It is highly unlikely, however, that any of the upcoming deaths will
occur at Insite, where last month professional staff dealt
successfully with 36 overdoses, according to an Insite nurse who spoke
to the Province newspaper.

There has never been an overdose death at Insite, a record that
captures only part of its harm reduction impact. Beyond overdose first
aid, the supervised injection centre helps prevent the spread of HIV
and hepatitis C infections among injection drug users, and refers
users who are ready to quit to detox and recovery services. Any fool
could see that Insite is a model that should be reproduced across the
province and the country.

But the Harper Conservatives are not just any fools. They are
ideologically committed to "tough on crime" rhetoric and law and order
posturing, and so, despite the huge body of research that illustrates
the benefits of the harm reduction model and of Insite itself, the
HarperCons are mounting an expensive and probably fruitless exercise
at the Supreme Court. They hope that the nation's top court will
reverse decisions in the courts below that ruled any attempt to close
Insite and deny Vancouver addicts access to this life saving service
would be unconstitutional.

At best, this will be a pointless and meanspirited waste of public
money. At worst, if the Supreme Court endorses the approach being
taken by the Harper government and allows it to shut down Insite, the
costs will be horrendous. More addicts will die, and more overdoses on
the streets will further tax our over-extended emergency wards and law
enforcement personnel. Some addicts who might have found their way to
recovery through the non-judgmental care available at Insite will
remain lost in their addictions, and more families will be left to
mourn for their lost loved ones.

Mayor Gregor Robertson recently joined with five former

Vancouver mayors in calling on the federal government to cease and
desist from its anti-Insite campaign. Divided on many questions, the
mayors were unanimous in supporting the harm reduction work done at
Insite.

Last year the Canadian Medical Association Journal published research
that showed that Insite reduces the harms of drug addiction, increases
uptake into drug treatment and rehabilitation programs, and helps
reduce adverse community impacts of addiction in various ways, such as
decreasing used needles. Despite this and many other studies with
similar findings, the federal government is going to the wall in its
attempt to get its Dirty Harry approach to law enforcement endorsed by
the courts.

The whole sorry business reminds me of the classic play and film
Inherit the Wind, a dramatization of the infamous "Scopes Monkey
Trial," in which civil liberties lawyer Clarence Darrow defended an
American school teacher being prosecuted in Tennessee for teaching
Darwin's theory of evolution. Like the upcoming Supreme Court hearings
on the Insite case, the American trial pitted science and sanity
against ferociously held ideology. Despite Darrow's brilliant defence,
the Tennessee court found Scopes guilty, and Americans are still, many
decades later, pitted against each other in battles over evolution,
"intelligent design" and the degree to which our irrational faith
commitments ought to direct public policy.

We can only hope that our Supreme Court doesn't echo that long ago
Tennessee jury and opt for ideology over sanity. If Harper and his
policy advisers succeed in their attempt to destroy Insite, our city
and some of its most vulnerable citizens will truly inherit the wind.