NOTHING SAFE ABOUT SAFE-INJECTION SITES

Doctors will tell you that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of
cure.

Health Canada should keep that adage in mind as it moves closer to
accepting proposals from Canadian cities interested in establishing
safe-injection sites for hard-core heroin and cocaine addicts.

The ministry is currently reviewing criteria for the sites, where
users would inject under supervised conditions, and the first ones
could appear in cities like Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal as early
as next year.

Proponents suggest that safe-injection sites would help reduce the
costs of crime, health care, courts and overall social disruption
attributed to drug addicts. With medical professionals monitoring the
actual injections, the sites will reduce the spread of AIDS and
hepatitis C, and cut down on the number of users who overdose.

And it's hard to argue with the numbers.

A federal-provincial report on injection drug use last year estimated
that there are 125,000 injection drug users (IDUs) in Canada. It
suggested that two-thirds of hepatitis C infections and one-third of
HIV cases can be attributed every year to IDUs. The projected direct
and indirect costs of HIV/AIDS linked to IDU will be $8.7 billion over
six years. And the medical costs to treat hepatitis C sufferers will
be even greater.

Those are the dollar figures.

But if they're going to make a difference, these sites must be more
than just money-saving, sanitary places to self destruct.

Drug prevention and treatment need to be introduced into the equation
somehow.

Otherwise, as some critics have already suggested, they'll do nothing
to discourage addicts from kicking a lethal habit. In fact, they may
even attract more drug users.

"Why not save people from the fatal disease of addiction and not just
from the fatal opportunity for an overdose at some point in time?"
asked U.S. drug czar John Walters in a speech earlier this week to the
Vancouver Board of Trade.

While many Canadians share his concern that the sites will do nothing
more than promote substance abuse, the idea should not be given short
shrift.

In Germany and Switzerland, similar facilities have have proven
successful at decreasing the number of people sharing needles and
lowering the incidences of disease.

But is that enough? Is that treating the symptom and not the
cause?

To make a real difference, the scope of the proposed safe-injection
sites must be expanded to include treatment services as well, where
addicts can receive medical care and drug counselling.

Just as important as the bricks-and-mortar solution, though, is an
attitude shift in which governments and police agencies recognize that
solving the problem of substance abuse involves seeing it as more than
just a crime committed by weak-willed individuals.

It's a sickness, and like cancer and AIDS, it must be treated with a
combination of cash and compassion.

Even from a pragmatic standpoint, the best way to prevent crime and
disease associated with drug abuse is to reduce the number of people
abusing drugs.

And that means education, and it means accessible detoxification and
treatment programs.

Giving addicts a safe place to shoot up is a first step. Understanding
their illness and helping them to overcome it is a bigger goal to shoot for.