FEW WILL DRINK TO THAT IDEA

Province readers, God bless them, can be chippy lot. But when there's
a nail that needs to be hammered, they usually hit it squarely on the head.

A case in point is the "harm reduction" ideology in the Downtown
Eastside, Vancouver's Drug Central, where sad souls who spend much of
their lives hammered or stoned are encouraged to remain zoned out . .
. but with high-priced government help.

It's a politically correct ideology, relentlessly pushed by activist
medical researchers, that says hard-core addicts have a right at
taxpayer expense to virtually anything legal or illegal they want to
put into their bodies.

It's an ideology in whose name Vancouver addicts have been handed
everything from free needles to crack pipes. And its shining jewel is
a semi-sacred place called Insite on Hastings Street, where they can
shoot up in a government-sanctioned setting.

Now the group that runs Insite, the Portland Hotel Society, wants a
second injection site, with spokesman Mark Townsend saying one tiny
facility in a big city is "clearly" not enough.

Clearly? Hardly. As Province reader Jan van Vugt of Abbotsford points
out, there wouldn't be a need for a second facility if the first had
worked: "A success in this type of business would be a reduction in
the need for its services."

Rewarding failure is the new normal in addiction services, with
organizations such as the bizarrely named Eastside Illicit Drinkers
Group for Education winning a $52,000 grant to study the benefits of
alcohol maintenance programs.

It isn't hard to figure out what this costly research will confirm,
namely that the way for these illicit drinkers to sort out their
craving for household liquids is for them to have a special lounge
where regular liquor is freely available.

I'm grateful to witty Province letter-writer Valerie Moss for
reminding us how crazy all this is. Moss, a Vancouver court agent,
has just turned 60 and her RRSP has taken two big hits. Which is why
she's considering switching to plan B for her retirement.

"OK, so this could actually work: Wake up, go to Insite injection
place to get my morning shot of heroin; take care of the aches and
pains and lift my mood for the day," she suggests.

"Somewhere for breakfast? Whatever the kindly nuns or do-gooders are
serving. Then maybe take a book to the park if it's a sunny day. Then
over to the Insite booze club for a pre-lunch sherry . . ."

And so it goes through the day, with a free pre-dinner vodka at the
club before heading off to the Union Gospel Mission for dinner. Then
it's back to the injection site for a heroin shot to ensure a good
night's sleep. "Retirement sorted," she adds.

Moss didn't simply hit the nail on the head; she hit it out of the
park. It's time for a total rethink of the harm-reduction philosophy
to which governments in Victoria and Vancouver have become addicted.

No, we don't need to jail hard-core addicts/alcoholics. We just need
to treat them like anybody else with a major health problem: Get them
off the poisons that are killing them.