NEEDLE EXCHANGE NOT THE WAY TO CLEAN UP CITY'S DRUG PROBLEM

My mother always told me that if she ever caught me doing drugs I
would be out of the house and on my own. Maybe that's why doing drugs
never interested me. That or the fact that I have lost friends to the
wholesome goodness of a high.

This could be why when I heard that the Public Health Department was
trying to implement the Toronto Drug Strategy Program, I was excited.
I figured that this new plan would help those users - like my former
friends - get off drugs. I was appalled when I realized this was not
the case. The plan was to create a safe house for addicts to shoot up
using clean needles.

Put together by five city councillors, the Centre for Addiction and
Mental Health (CAMH), Toronto Police Services and the City of Toronto,
the Drug Strategy offers seven recommendations on how to clean up city
users.

OK, finding ways to sober up Toronto and educate families,
neighbourhoods, youth and drug users about ways to be safe when
getting high sounds fair enough.

However, the problem I have is that these safe houses being set up are
going to be giving out crack pipes and needles to users.

Instead of trying to rehabilitate and get these people off the
streets, Toronto wants to push the use of drugs by giving addicts
exactly what they want - a clean place to shoot up.

To the city this idea sounds good, because they think it will decrease
the number of HIV/AIDS and other transmittable disease cases in the
GTA.

According to CAMH crack cocaine is the most readily available and most
widely used street drug in Toronto, compared to others such as heroin
and ecstasy. Crack and heroin users are more at risk of contracting
HIV/AIDS or other blood diseases, as well as an increase in heart
attacks, strokes, seizures and malnourishment. And while we don't have
the same problem with needle sharing and HIV/AIDS as the downtown East
side in Vancouver, there is still a problem on our streets.

The question that we need to ask ourselves is who is this helping? Is
this not providing a safe haven for these users to use even more?
Isn't finding a way to combat the disease the goal of helping drug
users?

Especially since using drugs is an addiction, the best way to
rehabilitate is to provide support, not to keep feeding the person a
substance.

And while I understand that being cut off quickly from any substance
can lead to other sorts of issues, such as depression, illness and
withdrawal, there are other options.

You would think that providing help would be to set up an institution,
just like an alcohol rehabilitation centre, that takes you in and
takes you off whatever drug you are on. This sort of treatment makes
you go through a program to restore you until you are no longer
reliant on the substance. They evaluate you personally and find the
right treatment for you.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse says that the United States is
looking to develop pharmaceutical substances like medications to help
users conquer their cravings. Many centres also use behavioural
therapy and relapse prevention with recovery education. CAMH provides
cocaine specific outpatient treatment centres with holistic
approaches. There are also methadone clinics, where, while they still
feed drugs to addicts, they slowly ween them off at the same time.

This is what rehabilitation is all about, taking the necessary means
to ensure that addicts become clean, not ensuring that they have a
free space to shoot up in.