IS T.O. GOING TO THE DOPE USERS?

For those who maintained that a vote for David Miller was a vote for
dope-smoking, free-loving Commie freaks, last week's unveiling of the
city's drug strategy must seem a vindication.

The strategy has all sorts of elements - its 66 recommendations
encompass a host of preventative measures including bolstering drug
abuse prevention in schools and going after marijuana grow houses
more effectively.

But that's not the part that is even now sticking in the craws of the
likes of Ward 2 Councillor Rob Ford (Etobicoke North) and other
right-wingers. A big component of the drug strategy is a practice
known as "harm reduction".

Essentially, harm reduction encompasses a recognition that drug and
alcohol addiction is a part of the human condition - not something
that, as the old Nancy Reagan line goes, we can just say no to, and
thereby expect to eradicate.

So rather than fight a losing war to rescue people who will be less
grateful than an Iraqi freedom fighter, harm reduction attempts to do
what it says: make sure that people who are stuck in this lifestyle
are protected from the health risks: AIDS, malnutrition, what-have-you.

So the strategy has components that are a bit more controversial. It
asks council to endorse the decriminalization of possession of small
amounts of marijuana. It wants a study looking into safe injection
sites or places where addicts of crack cocaine can safely smoke. It
recommends providing paraphernalia for crack users - a service that
won't likely prevent the spread of disease according to Chief Medical
Officer of Health Dr. David McKeown, but will help bring a
marginalized group of addicts in greater contact with public health workers.

Toward that end, the strategy speaks kindly of those who are living
with these addictions. In years past - or indeed, any time prior to
last Thursday - we might have comfortably called those people drug abusers.

But the report notes that the term 'abuse' is pejorative. So
throughout, those with a drug problem are known as drug users. There
is a recommendation to look at ways to de-stigmatize those addicted
to crack cocaine and other harder drugs.

It's all a tough sell. As others have pointed out, Toronto Public
Health and the city has no problem stigmatizing all sorts of
activities: smoking tobacco in public, serving restaurant food out of
a dirty kitchen, spraying chemical weed killers on a private lawn. It
does so because the activities themselves cause a public harm - to
the environment, to the lungs of non-smokers, to fine diners'
delicate digestive tracts. To suggest that crack addicts and the
criminal infrastructure that supports their habit don't cause
significant public harm is ludicrous.

The premise of the drug strategy is not, mind you, to be consistent
with the mood of the Toronto Board of Health.

It is, as McKeown described it, relentlessly pragmatic. If
stigmatizing drug, er, users makes them harder to reach, never mind
how the tobacco, er, users feel, stop stigmatizing. If drug, er,
users want help quitting, fine - otherwise, help them live as well as
they can in the meantime.

The trouble, of course, is that the drug strategy is not just a drug
strategy. It's a public statement. In a city fearful in the wake of a
spike in gun violence and worried about even higher rates of crime,
that the consumption of illegal substances - the abuse of them, not
to mince words - is something that our leadership accepts.

Now that statement might be appropriate. Certainly the declaration of
the War on Drugs in the 1980s didn't do much good for drug users -
maybe this will be more effective.