INSITE RULING GOES TO JAIL

Drug addicts in Vancouver's downtown east side now have the
protection of the Supreme Court of Canada to avail themselves of a
medical facility, the Insite clinic, where they may inject themselves
with heroin under medical supervision.

Now: What about drug addicts in the country's prisons? Can they
expect the court's ruling to change the way they are treated?

This is no academic question but one which the members of the House
of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and Security may soon be seized.

On Tuesday, at a meeting of that committee, Catherine Latimer, a
lawyer and the executive director of the John Howard Society of
Canada, suggested that the court's landmark and controversial ruling
should have an impact as that committee looks at the issue of drug
and alcohol use in our prisons.

Latimer, in an interview after the meeting, explained that she is not
advocating so-called "shooting galleries" on every cell block in
Canada's jails.

But she did say the Supreme Court's Insite ruling could have
important implications for the prison population.

"One, it identifies addiction as a type of illness and as soon as
something is identified as an illness, it's treated a little bit
differently and, secondly, it raises a whole lot of questions how
(ministerial) discretion has been exercised in denying harm-reduction
opportunities to other people who are governed by federal legislation
such as inmates."

Some prisons now offer "bleach kits" to inmates who are intravenous
drug users to help stanch the spread of disease. Would a prison
needle exchange program be another harm-reduction measure?

This is precisely the kind of program the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal
Network pushed for last year, noting that similar programs work in
Europe and Asia.

But as Conservative MP Candice Hoeppner noted, needles can be pretty
effective weapons and, surely, we would want to keep needles away
from prisoners.

And yet, the Supreme Court's Insite ruling has clearly forced policy
makers in Ottawa and in every provincial capital to do some new
thinking on this controversial issue.

The good news, so far as drug use in prisons goes, is that the rate
of use appears to be dropping.

That said, drug use continues to pose a threat not only to the safety
of drug users themselves but also the wider safety and security of
the prison population and prison guards.

Conservative MPs on the security committee appear to prefer tackling
the drug problem in prisons by focusing on measures that reduce the supply.

That might involve more strict interdiction measures, more guards,
and more punishment.

Randall Garrison, a B.C. NDP MP who taught criminal justice issues at
college, said the government will soon reach a point of diminishing
returns by implementing more costly programs to cut the supply of drugs.

Better yet, the NDP says, would be increasing measures to reduce demand.

This brings us back to the John Howard Society and its call for a
broad-based approach that encompasses treatment and harm reduction.
Turn addicts into ex-addicts, in their view, and you're beating the
drug problem.

The Insite ruling, to the discomfit, I suspect, of many small-c
conservatives, now tips the scales to those who advocate that
supervised, safe use of dangerous drugs is an important and useful
part of the process of creating those ex-addicts.