DRUGS: MP FEARS FOR ADDICTS' WELFARE

Randy White has mixed feelings regarding a report on drug use in Canada.
Some recommendations are innovative, said the Langley-Abbotsford MP, while
others are potentially dangerous.

Drug addicts in Canada could be subjected to more harm than help if many of
the suggestions from a parliamentary committee are adopted, said Langley-
Abbotsford MP Randy White.

White has taken issue with some of the 39 recommendations from the Special
Parliamentary Committee on the Non-medical use of Drugs final report. Part
one of the report was tabled in the House of Commons Monday.

Some of the recommendations deal with harm reduction, including the
establishment of needle exchange programs, safe injection sites and heroin
maintenance programs.

"Harm reduction is a misnomer; it's harm extension," White said. "What it
creates is a major ghetto of drug addicts."

Those recommendations give up on the idea of prevention, intervention, and
education, White told the Langley Advance News, after a Monday morning
press conference in Vancouver.

Despite the criticism, White is pleased with other recommendations,
including the creation of a Drug Commissioner, nation-wide drug surveys,
increased funding for the Canadian Centre on Substance abuse and others.

White is hoping some recommendations regarding substance abuse in
correctional facilities will facilitate his idea of bringing a program he
learned about in Mexico to Canada.

The report recommends amendments to the Criminal Code to provide a wider
range of sentencing options, including treatment, for substance-dependent
people.

White's next step is to take a delegation to Mexico to show them the Second
Chance Program - a drug rehabilitation program run in prisons which doesn't
use drug substitutions such as methadone and has an extremely high success
rate.

Wehther or not the federal government adopts any of the committee's
recommendations, remains to be seen.

"The unfortunate reality," White said, "is that the Liberals undertake
efforts if it's in their best interest at the polls."

The official opposition released a supplementary report Monday as well. The
Alliance party states it believes the committee worked together in a
"positive manner and that most of the recommendations . . . will begin to
make positive changes."

But, the party said, it is "extremely concerned that the Liberal government
has already adopted the 'harm reduction' model of Europe, which is proving
to be a failure . . . while at the same time ignoring our North American
partners . . . who are moving in significant directions of intervention,
education, rehabilitation, and treatment based on abstinence.

"Canada does this at it's own social peril."

The special committee was formed in May 2001 as a result of a motion
brought by the Canadian Alliance. The committee was given the mandate to
study the factors underlying or relation to the non-medical use of drugs in
Canada. White, an Alliance MP, is one of the two vice-chairs, and the
committee's membership is held by a majority of Liberals.

Langley-based Focus on the Family said Monday that the report fell short of
expectations.

"The Committee's support for harm reduction measures should be termed 'harm
extension' or even 'harm promotion' as it prolongs addiction without
meeting the crucial need to break the dependency," said Focus on the Family
Canada spokesperson Anna Marie White. "The absurdity of giving needles and
narcotics to injection drug users becomes apparent when we consider that
diabetic must pay for their life-saving needles and insulin."