The Insite Decision

FACTS BEAT IDEOLOGY

Conservatives need to stop pretending harm reduction doesn't work and
just admit they don't like the concept

Facts and science found refuge in Canada's Supreme Court last Friday.
The court delivered a smack down to ideology, finding that the
success of Vancouver's safe injection program in providing better
outcomes for drug addicts and improving public order is inarguable.
The court's highly technical decision hinged on the unanimous
conclusion that the program's goals have been provably met. Debate over.

Insite works on the principal of harm reduction; if an individual is
going to use drugs then it's better they do it in a clean and
supervised environment. The goals of the program are to prevent the
transmission of disease, lower the incidence of public drug taking
and to expose users on a regular basis to addiction professionals,
increasing the opportunities to choose rehab over continued drug use.

For half a decade opponents of Insite have marshalled bogus studies,
torqued factoids and the occasional legitimate dissenting research in
order to insist that it's a complete disaster. The Prime Minister
declared it to be "a failed experiment," as if saying this would make it true.

To maintain that Insite doesn't work requires that one wilfully
ignore scores of peer reviewed studies, not to mention the Vancouver
Police Department, which found a notable decline in public
injections, discarded drug paraphernalia and most importantly, crime
and public disorder. Aside from an RCMP study that was deliberately
commissioned to find against the program, there is almost no research
undermining its effectiveness. The only one I have come across to
date is a critique in the British medical journal The Lancet that
disputes a previous study about the number of fatal overdoses Insite
has prevented. One item on a shopping list of objectives is in doubt.
So if the success of Insite is so well established, then why did
Stephen Harper's government have to lose all the way to the Supreme
Court to learn the obvious? Because Insite's opponents cannot bring
themselves to admit the only arguments to be raised against it are
rooted in morality. They don't like safe injection ! sites. They
don't like that their government is tacitly sanctioning the use of
illegal drugs. Fair enough. Why not just say so?

Moralism is the Achilles heel of contemporary conservatism. The
notions of personal liberty and small government are irreconcilable
with a state-mandated morality. To resolve the inevitable cognitive
dissonance that arises from simultaneously maintaining that
government shouldn't control guns but should tell homosexuals to cut
it out, social conservatives resort to heterodox mavericks and junk science.

As a radio show host I am constantly on the receiving end of urgent
emails directing me to studies linking abortion to suicide, marijuana
use to heroin addiction and homosexuality to everything from child
molestation to a shorter life span. Pointing out to my correspondents
that these studies have been thoroughly discredited is like trying to
speak reason to a 9/11 Truther. The above-mentioned studies on
homosexuality were cooked up by Dr. Paul Cameron, who has been
expelled and denounced by just about every professional body he could
be associated with.

Of course, that's merely proof to him and his followers of a massive,
pro-gay conspiracy.

Having been thumped by The Supremes, the more hard-headed of Insite's
opponents will retreat to the very last trench and argue that liberal
dominated courts overruled the will of Parliament. That it is the job
of the courts to strike down overweening legislation and that the
judgment was unanimous (including two Harper appointed justices)
won't make a difference.

If the federal Conservatives and their supporters want to inject
moral arguments into policy debates in Canada, bring it on. If you
don't like abortion, gays, assisted suicide, harm reduction, divorce,
premarital sex and single women deliberately having babies, then say
so. If you have science and statistics that establish a public
interest in otherwise self-regarding conduct then let's have at it.

But if science and facts fail to back up personally held convictions,
then there's nothing but holy books and persuasion to fall back on.