SAVING ADDICTS' LIVES: HARDLINE ALLIANCE MPS STILL DON'T UNDERSTAND

Philip Owen sat quietly to one side of the press conference, shaking his
head every time Randy White blasted the evils of drug harm reduction.

The ex-mayor of Vancouver wore a look of utter amazement as the Alliance
MP, co-chair of a House committee on drug use, railed on about
safe-injection sites creating "harm extension."

Fellow committee members Libby Davies and Hedy Fry were less amazed, having
listened to the Abbotsford hardliner for the past 18 months. But they all
agree White is dead wrong on this issue.

And he is. Harm reduction, one of the key elements in Vancouver's
progressive four-pillars drug strategy, has been proven to save lives and
reduce crime in cities such as Sydney, Australia, Bern, Switzerland and
Frankfurt, Germany.

"The wrong way to go," huffed White, referring to Ottawa's decision to
allow pilot tests of safe-injection sites in cities that want them and
heroin maintenance trials for Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal.

He wants more emphasis on detox, rehabilitation, education and abstinence,
the big A-word bandied about by other boot-campers who see it as a kind of
mythical cold-turkey panacea.

Don't get me wrong. Those approaches can all work, depending on the
willingness of the addicted person.

But like an alcoholic who refuses to help himself, they do nothing for the
addict stuck in a back-alley life of dependency on pathetic drug pushers.

White moans that safe-injection sites will merely be a "gathering place for
those who are addicted."

Well, that's the whole point -- to get them out of the crime-infested back
alleys where they contract HIV and hepatitis from dirty needles, and
frequently die from overdosing.

Davies and later Owen made that point over and over, rebutting the
irresponsible nonsense of White and Alliance MP James Moore that this is a
government heroin giveaway for "shooting galleries."

Harm reduction, said Davies, is only one part of a comprehensive plan for
"users on the street who are very marginalized . . . a way to begin to
access health services and treatment and support."

Ironically, just what White is calling for. Alas, the poor fellow doesn't
understand that "you can't get into treatment if you're a dead body," as
Davies put it.

Fry, a medical doctor, notes that addicted substance abusers -- including
those on alcohol or prescription drugs -- "are people who suffer from a
chronic relapsing illness and we have to deal with it as that."

Abstinence? It will work as well as it does for teens told not to have sex.
Some will, some won't. Do we leave drug addicts who can't go cold turkey to
die?

Harm reduction, says Owen, is "an opportunity to separate the user from the
dealer . . . a young girl has the pimp standing 10 feet away and the dealer
15 feet away, and they're slowly murdering her . . .

"HELLO, it's a point of entry into rehabilitation and recovery, whereas now
you can't do that."

Hello, Randy. Hello, James. Anyone home?