JAIL NOT BEST FOR ADDICTS, JUDGE SAYS

Why is British Columbia opening safe-injection sites for drug addicts while
Ontario is jailing them, a Kitchener judge asked yesterday.

Justice Colin Westman posed the question during the sentencing of a
42-year-old Kitchener woman who pleaded guilty to possessing morphine.

Crown prosecutor Kathleen Nolan asked for a 30-day jail sentence for Donna
Santisteban, who has a long record of drug offences as well as fraud
convictions.

Santisteban was found passed out at the wheel of her car, a syringe in her
hand half-filled with a clear liquid, near downtown Kitchener on March 29,
Kitchener's Ontario Court heard.

She also had drug paraphernalia such as a large band, a spoon, a lighter,
water, alcohol swabs and matches.

Police searched her and found a pill bottle containing morphine pills and a
ground-up substance. Her lawyer, Tom Brock, said jail was not the place for
drug addicts.

"Do you jail someone for addiction when all they're doing is trying to
satisfy that addiction and no one else is being hurt?" he asked.

He acknowledged her two sons, who live with her mother, have been affected
by their mother's lifestyle.

Brock said Santisteban, who once worked in the travel industry and taught
travel courses at college, was reduced to prostituting herself to get money
for drugs.

She's been in jail before, but nothing has made her stop using, Brock said.

The latest threat to send her to jail "put a little fire in her," and she
contacted a drug rehabilitation centre in Toronto in hopes of signing
herself in and avoiding jail, Brock said.

Westman seemed to sympathize with Brock's viewpoint. He asked Nolan if she
thought jailing addicts would deter them from using drugs.

Then he mentioned Vancouver's safe-injection site which gives users
injection kits and lets them shoot up under nurse supervision.

It is North America's first authorized and government-funded drug-injection
site.

"How can one province be doing this and another province actually jailing
(addicts)?" Westman asked.

When Nolan suggested the Vancouver approach was novel and hasn't yet been
proven to work, Westman replied, "It's not novel," and suggested
Scandinavia and England have tried similar projects.

"Jails don't seem to have achieved the purpose we thought," Westman said,
adding that the Vancouver safe-injection site now seems to be the
"enlightened approach."

The controversial project was launched as a way of preventing deaths and
diseases contracted through using dirty needles.

Westman suspended Santisteban's sentence and put her on probation for one
year. She must carry through with her plan to attend drug rehabilitation.

Westman said if that doesn't work, then jail "becomes more tenable. It
takes you off the street and protects us from property crimes" that usually
accompany drug addiction, he said.

Brock said Santisteban's 10-year drug addiction began innocently with a
prescription for back pain because of an injury. But her doctor kept
prescribing the pills for her back pain and it "got out of control," Brock
said. She began overusing them.

She descended into cocaine addiction, then crack cocaine, which was
cheaper, and most recently, morphine. She managed to quit cocaine for a
number of years at one point.

Brock said her marriage ended because of her addictions. She's now on welfare.

"She's terrified of going to custody," he told the judge.