THE FOLLY OF FREE HEROINE

As predicted, Health Canada has green-lighted North America's first-ever
program to provide pharmaceutical heroin to hardcore addicts in Canada's
street drug Mecca, downtown eastside Vancouver.

Here's another prediction: after the program is hailed as an even bigger
"success" than the mislabeled "safe injection sites" in that same sorry
locale, the pilot program will be extended to junkies across this
once-great dominion, to the cheers of social workers and other addiction
management careerists on government payrolls from sea to sea to sea.

A few voices of dissent puncture the politically correct chorus of a
mythical "four pillars" approach to addiction that starts with free needles
and then drifts into nurse-supervised shoot-up parlours, free crack pipes,
and a lobby group for loud and proud addicts that is treated with the same
reverence by the city media as the self- proclaimed union of "sex-trade
workers."

A doctor with the pilot project explains apologetically to radio listeners
that he can only offer a lucky few junkies free heroin for a year, after
which he's sure hoping they can keep it up but he can't make promises.

An articulate ex-junkie who quit the old-fashioned way then calls in to say
it is all a big mistake, and giving him heroin would only have prolonged
his agony by keeping him from making the hard choice to gut it out through
detox and recovery and take responsibility for his life again. The host
thanks him, but shows no sign of being swayed by such anecdotal evidence.

Not to worry, heroin junkies. The opinion leaders and politicians are of
one voice, except for a couple of old "social conservative" dinosaurs like
MP Randy White, and everyone knows he can't be trusted to make important
decisions in the public interest.

Why, he thinks murderers and rapists should stay in jail, and without the
benefit of free needles and heroin to make their days go by more
pleasantly. After all, these poor folks are also victims of their
uncontrollable urges, aren't they?