FREE CRACK PIPES SEND WRONG MESSAGE

Why Not Free Taxi For Alcoholics, Patch For Smokers?

It's more about the message than the money. B.C.'s latest handout to
crack addicts is likely considered a cruel joke by the sick among us,
struggling to afford the over-priced pills they have to ingest to keep
their chronic diseases in check.

Try explaining the taxpayer-funded give-away of syringes, alcohol
swabs, methadone and now crack pipes for junkies -- who view their own
lives as just as disposable as a dirty needle -- to the diabetic who
must supply her own insulin-injecting apparatus if she wants to stay
alive.

Who can blame her if she feels governments are on the addict's side,
that they care more about the junkie's health and state of mind than
hers?

As of April, the Vancouver Island Health Authority and its sister
agency on the mainland will be offering drug users free surgical tubes
sterilized and fitted to plug into the inhaling end of an addict's
crack pipe.

Health authorities speculate that, if popular, the program could
reduce the risk of spreading such blood-borne diseases as hepatitis C,
which they say currently costs B.C. citizens from $71 million to $143
million a year to treat.

The cynics, and I'll admit I'm one, view this recent addition to the
harm-reduction distribution list as just another prop to keep the user
using and the Downtown Eastside's half-billion-dollar service-provider
industry cruising.

Fundamentally, I support well-organized efforts to reduce the
suffering and misery of rejects and the marginalized in Vancouver and
elsewhere.

I also applaud responsible government that wants to tighten the reins
on our runaway health-care costs.

But addicts aren't society's only curse. The habits of foodoholics,
tobacco and alcohol abusers also rack up huge annual expenses to our
health system:

Tobacco use drains the B.C. economy of roughly $1.4 billion a year,
approximately eight per cent of our health-care expenditures.

Obesity costs the provincial economy $730 million a year, $380 million
of which is in direct medical costs.

Alcohol abuse costs B.C. another $1.4 billion annually.

To curb these costs, government didn't opt to hand out filtered
cigarettes or nicotine patches to smokers, free taxi rides to drinking
drivers and sugarless, low-fat snacks to kids.

No, it made their consumption less attractive. It hiked the price of a
deck of smokes, banned puffers from public places, boosted fines and
CounterAttack patrols to collar impaired drivers and pulled junk food
from schools.

In an ideal world, I'd choose to ease the financial and physical
hardships of autistic children, the mentally ill, fetal-alcohol
babies, AIDs patients, cancer survivors, suicidal teens and
self-mutilators, abused kids and crime victims, impoverished elders,
teen addicts -- all of whom have been cited in countless newscasts as
badly in need of increased health care.

Frankly, the goodwill gestures of harm-reduction advocates would be
more widely applauded if they first invested in treatment programs
that rewarded addicts who got clean.

The words of a Province reader who mastered his habit 14 years ago are
memorable. Harm-reduction initiatives give addicts a warm and fuzzy
feeling because it means government is on their side, Phil wrote,
adding such a plan will likely draw more addicts to B.C.

"Bottom line, addiction for most is a choice," he said.

"If we continue to make it comfortable for them, why would they choose
to kick [the habit?]"

Why indeed.