FREE CRACK COCAINE PIPES ENABLE THE SAVING OF LIVES

She started drinking at 12. Marijuana at 14. Was onto harder drugs by
her 20s. Cocaine. Heroin. Crack. She wanted to forget. The abuse, the
violence, the horror that surrounded her youth. But she carried the
scars. She went from one abusive relationship to another and by her
early 20s, she had two kids. Tried to straighten out countless times.
Managed to hold it all together while her kids were in their school
years, but, as soon as they left home, which they did the first
opportunity they could, she plummeted into her "suicide mission with
life'' as she calls those years of heavy drug use and abuse.

She's sober now. Has been ever since two police officers found her
near dead of an overdose and brought her to the Calgary Drop-In. She
stayed a week, got a bed in rehab and, this time, sobriety stuck.

That was five years ago. She's 57 now and committed to her sobriety
and grateful for those two officers and the staff at the DI who kept
watch over her as she struggled to find her path out of her
addiction. She's grateful for the countless others who over the years
of her wandering in and out of the shelter, in and off the streets,
in and out of attempts to quit, never gave up on her, never refused to help.

She doesn't want to kill herself anymore, though her heavy drug use
and the dirty needles have left her with a shortened lifespan.

She doesn't care. "I can't change how long it took me to wake up to
the fact I was trying to kill myself with drugs," she says. "I am
alive today and I want to make the most of what time I've got."

In 2008, Safeworks, an outreach program of Alberta Health Services,
began a harm reduction program aimed at mitigating the effects of
sharing crack pipes with other addicts. Through the program, users
had the opportunity to obtain a clean pipe. It helped cut down on
transmittable diseases and it gave outreach workers an opportunity to
build relationships and explore safer options with this at-risk
population of crack users.

It's disheartening that AHS decided last week to let this program go
up in smoke because it became controversial.

"It's wrong," its opponents cry. "It's ridiculous. It's enabling. I
don't want my tax dollars supporting illegal drug use," they say.

Crack is an illegal substance. Being an addict is not a criminal
offence. It is a disease.

Yes, handing out pipes is enabling. Not of illegal drug use. It
enables people, human beings, to stay alive and to hopefully, stay
disease free so that when they do reach out for sobriety, they won't
carry a death sentence with them.

It's all about keeping the lines of communication open.

It's all about reducing harm and building bridges to connect addicts
with caring professionals who can help them make healthier, safer choices.

It's about preventing death where possible.

"But they choose to take crack. They should live with the
consequences. Why should I have to pay?" argue critics of harm reduction.

People choose to smoke cigarettes. They do not choose cancer.

People choose to overeat. They do not choose heart disease or
diabetes and, while the correlation between behaviour and the outcome
can be made, it does not mean we do not offer treatment and support.
We don't shut the door on a cancer patient because his/ her cancer is
a result of their habit. And we don't turn off taxpayer dollars to
prevent them from getting health care when they don't stop smoking.

No one dreams of getting cancer. No one dreams of being an addict.

We can't change the choices someone made that lead them to crack. We
can change how we treat them, how we support them, how we walk with
them to ensure they do not fall so far there is no coming back.

Addicts need help. And while the medicine may be hard to swallow,
sometimes that help means all we can do is hold a space for them
while they struggle through whatever turmoil they're in until they
reach out for help. If that turmoil includes an addiction to illegal
substances, we must do whatever it takes to prevent that addiction
from killing them.

It is easy to paint such an issue black and white. To brush it over
with our insistence it's wrong. But what if it's not about right and
wrong and legal arguments about the principles?

What if it's about human beings? About saving lives?

Saving lives, whatever it takes, is more important than standing on
principles. Offering treatment to patients with lung cancer who still
can't quit smoking or handing out crack pipes to addicts who have not
yet found their will to stop are examples of our tax dollars at work.
Our tax dollars saving lives.

And if those dollars are spent giving someone a tool to make their
journey safer, that is a better option than risking their lives any
more than they already are. Because in the end, one life lost to
principles is one life too many.