EXCHANGE NEEDLED

AIDS Vancouver Island's desire to use ever more public money to pursue
the dubious practice of giving injection needles and distilled water
to sick street addicts is a deadly, counter-productive policy based on
questionable scientific data ("AIDS group pushes addict safe haven,"
July 25).

It is quite telling that your headline writer uses the verb "pushes"
to describe this foolish idea, as it is clear that AVI's intention is
to expand its little empire, effectively at the expense of the health
of these same addicts.

Common sense should tell these so-called "harm reduction" militants
that their latest proposal to expand these activities at a larger site
will only displace the disruption they cause to another location. Then
they will very likely be subject to another lawsuit by disgruntled
neighbours. AVI officials seem to be in complete denial of the degree
to which they are culpable of aggravating the addictions of many
desperate addicts. It is not simply a matter of having to put the AVI
administrative offices in a different location from the proposed new
site, as former AVI executive director Miki Hansen suggests.

No neighbours care where the AVI administration shuffles its paper,
but they do care that public health and safety are not compromised by
the activities of these well-intentioned, but naive people.

The Vancouver Island Health Authority would be wise to cut off all
funding to AVI immediately, forcing the closure of the Cormorant
Street facility. That would make the lawsuit filed by Cormorant and
Amelia neighbours redundant, and save AVI thousands in legal fees.

It would also force them to admit that VIHA has no confidence in their
creepy social-engineering experiment. VIHA could then look at helping
fund abstinence-based recovery houses in the affected neighbourhoods,
which should be run strictly by recovering addicts with substantial
"clean time."

Whether or not one agrees with current drug policy at the federal
level, it is clear that Prime Minister Harper's government has no
intention of allowing a new exemption which would allow addicts to
"shoot up inside," as new AVI executive director Katrina Jensen put it.

That being so, the City of Victoria, VIHA and the relevant provincial
ministries should immediately co-ordinate their efforts to provide proven
effective small- and medium-scale abstinence-based recovery houses for
those who need and desire treatment now.

Everyone knows that the theory of this experiment has proven a dismal
failure in practice. AVI officials pretend that they provide a
so-called "portal"
to treatment, but when there are no real treatment or recovery houses in
Victoria to speak of, why pretend any longer? To throw good money after bad,
and encourage more of this nonsense, would be the ultimate in cynical folly.

Gregory Hartnell,

Victoria