NOTHING SAFE ABOUT INJECTION SITES

The so-called "safe-injection sites" for junkies may initially strike
you, dear reader(s), as a very local, Vancouver-only issue.

Trust me, it is not.

For if the councillors in the biggest city in the province are foolish
enough to allow legal shooting galleries here, you may rest assured
the bonehead idea will be embraced in Abbotsford, Kelowna, Victoria,
Kamloops, Prince George, Penticton and more of our towns and cities,
large and small, as powerful, well-connected, media-savvy pushers and
their feeble-minded supporters press their case.

Scrape aside all the B.S. being peddled by the likes of Vancouver
Mayor Philip Owen about how safe-injection sites are a good and
wonderful idea whose time has come, and the bottom line is that
catering to drug addicts in this way will provide them with a haven -
not for healing but for continuing with and expanding their habit.

And the low-life pushers will be happier than pigs in mud at getting
access to a whole bunch of customers in one go at one legalized
location, rather than having to deal with their clients one by one on
the streets and alleys. Lost in all the preaching about aiding the
poor "victims" addicted to heroin or cocaine is the fact that they all
chose to put the poison into their bodies in the first place.

Until now, we all have had to face consequences in life for the
choices that we take, the decisions that we make.

But if we now are shown that instead of dire consequences for
ingesting drugs that make criminals and governments rich, we are
instead pampered and provided with a free place to stay hooked on the
venom, what the hell, pass the needle and let's suspend reality further.

The insidious spread of the skewered thinking of Mayor Owen and
others, including federal health Minister Allan Rock (health minister,
for God's sake!) is that taxpayers are prepared to pay for shooting
galleries if they will keep the addicts off the street and away from
the petty theft they commit daily to feed their insatiable desire to
get stoned again as soon as possible.

Just because Rock says that illegal drug-taking is not a
law-enforcement issue, that the addicts are merely "ill," does not
make it so.

In fact, his duplicitous doublespeak should be condemned for the lie
that it is, or the next thing you know, dealing in the illicit drugs
will not be a law-enforcement issue either, but merely free enterprise
in action.

Helping addicts by establishing tough rehabilitation programs and
through court-mandated counselling, with harsh penalties for those who
just go through the motions, is far better than throwing in the towel,
as Owen and Rock appear to be doing.

They are essentially telling the law-abiding citizens of our country
that the drug dealers and users have won, so what the hell, let's give
them everything they want and maybe they will leave the rest of us
alone.

Let's throw a million tax dollars at setting up a shooting gallery
that will come complete with its own bureaucracy that is sure to
spread across B.C., just as crack cocaine and heroin spread through
the bloodstream.

Safe-injection sites have been tried in other places, in other times,
and even in Vancouver in other years.

They have proved not to work, period. They exacerbate the problem,
rather than solving it.

I urge all of you across B.C. not to buy into the propaganda that says
differently, or you will suffer the consequences.