THERE'S NO QUICK FIX FOR MISERY OF DRUG ADDICTION

Vaccine May Have Uses but It Doesn't Solve Problem

Whatever you think of the recent Supreme Court of Canada's decision
sanctioning Vancouver's so-called safe-injection site, I think we can
all agree that injection drug use, however pleasurable at times,
causes untold misery.

I also think the solution, if there is one, is more likely to come
from folks toiling away unglamorously in biomedical labs than from
those getting themselves on TV by holding up protest signs and
smashing things.

However, there was just one problem with the exciting recent news that
California-based researchers had developed a vaccine to counter heroin
addiction. And that was the fact that it only worked on rats.

I'm not talking here of the large, two-legged, seemingly
uncontrollable variety in Victoria, but the tame, little, four-legged
ones routinely used in medical testing.

No, all kidding aside, I was initially heartened to hear that chemist
Dr. Kim Janda and his Scripps Research Institute team in San Diego had
produced a vaccine that supposedly blunts the effects of heroin in
addicted rodents.

"Rodents given the vaccine didn't experience the pain-deadening
effects of heroin and stopped helping themselves to the drug,
presumably because it ceased to have any effect," wrote reporter
Douglas Quenqua in a New York Times article on Monday.

This was no fluke. Janda has been trying to find vaccines to counter
addiction to everything from alcohol to marijuana -- and even obesity --
for more than 25 years. And it does appear as if he's on the verge of
a breakthrough.

"Verge," though, is the operative word. As Quenqua points out, not one
of Dr. Janda's vaccines has won approval from the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration: "The vaccines have yet to produce consistent results
in humans during clinical trials."

So the days when you'll be able to vaccinate your child against
addiction to heroin as you would measles seem to be some way off.

Besides, as Cannabis Culture magazine editor Jodie Emery said
Thursday, the consequences/side effects of such vaccine therapy are
unknown.

Vaccinated addicts frustrated in their attempts to get high may try
loading up dangerously on a drug ... or simply switch to another.

Emery, wife of Prince of Pot Marc Emery, is one of thousands trying to
get President Barack Obama to pardon her husband, serving time in
Yazoo City, Miss.

She told me she worries about the disturbing North American trend of
authorities forcing treatment on drug addicts.

She's right. It's a lot like something out of George Orwell's Animal
Farm, the famed anti-totalitarian fable featuring pigs.

"I think it's better to just focus on preventing people from abusing
any sort of activity or substance," Emery said. "That's always the
wisest option and the most effective."

Anti-drug crusader Al Arsenault, a former longtime downtown Vancouver
cop, agrees there's no quick fix to drug addiction: "There's no drug
that makes you do the emotional and mental work you have to do to
resolve your problems. That's the vaccine that doesn't exist."

Yes, the addict's best friend isn't another pill. It's that uniquely
human trait we call free will -- the ability to choose options other
than just injecting one poison after another into our bodies.