SAFE SITES IGNORE HARM DRAWN OUTSIDE

On one of the worst nights of my life, I spent long hours holding
solitary vigil over a young man who'd crashed into a stupor following
a bacchanalian cocaine binge.

Intently watching his chest rise and fall, terrified that his wildly
beating heart would seize -- a not uncommon outcome of such
staggering cocaine consumption -- and that I wouldn't be able to save
his life.

My casual attitude towards drugs -- by which I mean the
"recreational" drug use of others, because I do not indulge --
shifted and calcified that evening. While I have sympathy for the
addicted, and empathy for those whose lives have been turned upside
down by the lies and emotional manipulation at which habitual users
excel, I want no part of any undertaking, however well-intentioned,
that facilitates such ruin.

Toronto City Council, and the agencies it funds, shouldn't even
tacitly promote street drugs. To do so, even under the rubric of
health and safety vigilance, is a betrayal of all the efforts that
have gone into discouraging drug use, weaning addicts off their fix
and salvaging neighbourhoods where the drug trade is driving violent
crime.

After years, decades, of observing how families and communities have
been destroyed by illicit drugs, with law enforcement unable to
stanch the flow of cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, speed and especially
crack -- the high of choice in Toronto, or whatever choice devolves
to those with a deadening dependency -- I have come to believe it
would behoove us, as a society, to decriminalize the whole lot. Not
just marijuana, which was on the order table before Parliament
dissolved, but all the contraband substances we snort, smoke, shoot
and drop. Address the problem head-on as, exclusively, a health
issue, shunting all the multimillions spent on interdiction,
litigation and incarceration to intervention and treatment.

It won't happen, of course. I understand the complications of so
radical a premise; that society has the right to be disapproving, to
formalize in the Criminal Code its rejection of a harmful subculture.
Even in this la-la fantasy of a nation without drug laws I could
never foresee the state -- nor the mini-state of progressive Toronto
- -- establishing drug dens and safe crack houses to expedite the
consumption of these ravaging narcotics, under the benevolent eye of
professional custodians, no less.

That is the essence of the most objectionable of the 66
recommendations in an exhaustive drug strategy report presented to
council this week.

Most of the proposals by the Strategic Advisory Team, led by
Councillor Kyle Rae, are sensible and commendable. The most practical
call for a 24-hour crisis line, integrated services, more drug
enforcement at the local division level (where beat cops have the
greatest familiarity with problem neighbourhoods and known
traffickers), and residential treatment beds designated specifically
for youth -- astonishingly, there are none at the moment.

But safe crack kits -- disposable pipes -- when there's no evidence
such implements help prevent the spread of HIV, which is ostensibly
the rationale? There's no exchange of bodily fluids in smoking crack,
unlike heroin injection, and Toronto already has a needle exchange
program. Crack kits are no more than a convenience and the city
should not be making crack usage more convenient. That's
counter-effective.

More controversial is a proposal for a feasibility study of "safe
injection sites." There are some 50 such hard drug oases around the
world, including one in Vancouver, where the drug crisis arises from
heroin, not crack.

It's only a proposal to further study the scheme. But, believe me,
once Toronto's hard-core public health advocates get their foot in
this door, opposition to safe injection sites will be cast as
calamitous and ignorant-reactionary.

It is no such thing.

A young man describing himself as a former crack addict wrote me
recently to complain that he'd contracted HIV from using a broken
glass pipe. It had cut his lip and tainted blood had been exchanged.
I've no way of confirming that he either has the virus or that he got
it this way, though I doubt it. But his argument was that he should
have been provided sanitary utensils and a safe environment in which
to ingest his drugs because he was an addict. This assumption of
enablement and entitlement strikes me as absurd but it's very much in
keeping with the rationalizing philosophy behind safe injection
sites. Now addicts are demanding rights that don't exist under any
Charter.

Anyone who knows a drug addict knows it's always about the drug
addict. The world revolves around that person, his or her needs, and
those who love him or her fall easily into the role of accommodating
sap -- the parents who mortgage their house for a lawyer, the spouse
scrambling for a treatment placing, children raising themselves
because Mom or Dad is wasted.

So it's distressing that the authors of the drug strategy report
should promote the view that what's best for the addict -- who must
never be subjected to judgmental attitudes -- is paramount. This,
even though the preface to the report emphasizes its four core
facets: prevention, harm reduction, treatment and
enforcement.

Yet it wastes little time speculating how safe sites would impact on
the neighbourhoods where they're established. Drugs attract crime.
Drug users, converging on a known address, are a lure for drug
traffickers. Trafficking is a violent business. And drug dependency
leads addicts to prostitute themselves to get the money to get the
narcotic.

This is harm-inducing, not harm-reducing.

No one has yet proposed actually making drugs available at these safe
injection sites, or supervised consumption rooms, or crack sanctums.
But just wait for it. In the meantime, the report's authors remain
silent on where and how addicts will obtain the illegal substances
they will be able to consume in such a pleasant, judgmental-neutral
environment.

"The old ways aren't working and we need to try new approaches," said
Rae, as he introduced the drug strategy recommendations, which have
not yet been put to a vote.

While even Rae conceded that crack-raid shelters might not be
suitable for Toronto, "we do think it should be on the table for
consideration."

It's been considered. Now delete it from the report's table of
contents.