DRUG DANGERS

A subtle change has taken place in the Orwellian code words used to describe
the street drug addiction debate in Vancouver. In the final days of his
successful campaign, mayor-elect Larry Campbell referred to "safe
consumption sites". This is a departure from "safe injection sites", the
oxymoron that implies street heroin can be safely injected in any location,
and the change is significant.

"Safe consumption sites", translated from Vancouver-speak to English, means
expanding the plan from just free needles and nursing care to free crack
pipes and whatever else is needed for "consumption" of society's most
dangerous drugs. Whether it also means government-supplied heroin and
cocaine appears to be up to Ottawa. Justice Minister Anne McLellan is said
to be waiting for applications for an unspecified "pilot project".

So distorted is the debate in Vancouver that the only dissenting voice was
an anonymous advertisement placed in a Chinese-language newspaper, featuring
a needle covered by a circle and slash. Even candidates who oppose "harm
reduction" felt compelled to pay lip service to the dubious notion of
helping people keep using.

The debate is only stifled in the media. Ask anyone in Alcoholics Anonymous
or Narcotics Anonymous about "harm reduction" and you will hear another term
for it: "enabling", as in enabling people to keep using. These volunteer-run
programs have succeeded for decades not with soothing, misleading platitudes
but with hard truths, such as "you need to quit before you die."

The same plain message was delivered by U.S. drug policy director John
Walters in a speech in Vancouver this week. The addiction itself is as
deadly as the infections targeted by "harm reduction" programs.

Vancouver and Ottawa may decide this issue for all of us. Do they want the
problem solved, or just hidden?