R.E.A.L. Women on crack about Insite

REALWomen is another one of these fundie groups that never tires of lecturing everyone on the Correct Way to live their lives. Granny panties in a knot, snouts thrust firmly in the nation's crotches, their fingers wag relentlessly as they scold and jabber like hamsters in heat about all manner of Bad Behaviour... it goes on and on and groaningly on. And here they are again, their latest diatribes directed at Insite, Vancouver's safe injection site. When spring sprung a few weeks ago and the end of Insite's funding was on the horizon, it could only mean one thing: yet another pearl-clutching advisory from REALWomen to "Shut InSite down!"

Insite is the "harm reduction" pillar of the "Four Pillar" drug strategy that takes a new approach to coping with the drug problem by addressing different angles of the issue: Prevention, Treatment, Harm Reduction and Enforcement. But RW has its own Four Pillar solution: Punishment, Pain, Marginalization and Death. So naturally Landolt's Moral Minority Stormtroopers were perturbed that their calls to kill the dirty druggies earned them a nice bitch-slap from the Supreme Court this week with a decision that would keep Insite open for another year:

"In a surprise ruling yesterday, the court supported Vancouver's experimental supervised injection clinic and halted federal attempts to close the facility.

Judge Ian Pitfield said Insite should be allowed to remain open for a year even without a federal exemption from current drug laws."

REALWomen is REAL pissed! Activist Judges and their Social Engineering... filthy junkies... immoral... bad, wrong and dirrrrrty, and uh... SEX!!! SHRIEEEEEK!

"A single judge on the Supreme Court of BC, Mr. Justice Pitfield, handed down a decision on May 27, 2008, that took the olympian approach to judgeship. He did this by concluding that he knows best how to deal with drug addiction in Canada contrary to the policies of the federal government, which has jurisdiction over the issue. The government’s drug policy is to provide for a three-pillar approach to drug addiction by way of prevention (education), treatment and enforcement of drug laws, which has proven to be the only effective method of dealing with drug addiction.

Mr. Justice Pitfield, however, decided that, in his opinion, he preferred the approach of harm reduction, which is to assume that drug addiction is going to take place any way, so why not permit it in medically supervised sites? Unfortunately, drug injection sites merely continue the addiction, allowing the addict to enter a downward spiral to eventual death. Supporters of harm reduction also have an agenda which is to liberalize our drug laws." [...]

"Using the Charter of Rights as his reason, Mr. Justice Pitfield concluded that to deny addicts the use of the site contravenes section 7 of the Charter which provides for “the right to life, liberty and security of persons.”

The ramifications of his decision are far reaching. If allowed to stand, it will permit the establishment of drug injection sites all across the country – bringing more misery and suffering for addicts.

Because of the seriousness of the situation, the government should apply for a “stay” of the decision, pending an appeal. This would result in the misconstrued decision of Mr. Justice Pitfield’s to cease to be binding until finally dealt with by the higher courts. In the meantime, the site should be shut down to protect the lives of addicts." (emphasis mine)

"To protect the lives of addicts": sounds familiar, no? Abortion: "Women deserve better". Gay marriage: "Won't someone think of the children?" Yes, REALwomen's cup just runneth over with the sour, lumpy, cheesy milk of human kindness. Oh, they do talk the talk.

But bullshit walks. These authoritarian pinheads give not one shit for drug addicts -- they use the rhetoric of "concern" to mask a punishment-oriented mentality too stunted to even consider that there might be a better approach than the status quo. As discussed yesterday, we're 36 years, that's 1/3 of a century, into the goofy "War On Drugs", the net result of which has been rich drug dealers, more property crime, skyrocketing HIV among female addicts, clogged-up courts and packed-to-capacity prisons. If that's winning, I'd hate to see losing.

It's long past time to move on to Plan B of which this experimental Harm Reduction strategy is a part. It's also time to stop treating addicts like dispensable human garbage because they make decisions that some of us, in our high and mighty self-righteous glory, judge to be "immoral". We need instead to work on keeping them safe and helping them back into the community, something InSite does. Get a grip, Gwen -- if you're not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.

Not such a cracked idea

While I support harm-reduction drug strategies like needle exchanges and safe injection sites, initially I had a pretty negative response to Vancouver Island's upcoming crack pipe distribution program:

"A crack-pipe distribution program driven out of Nanaimo by city council will become available throughout Vancouver Island in the new year.

The distribution will be at needle exchanges in Victoria, Nanaimo, Campbell River and Courtenay, and mobile units running in most Island communities, said Murray Fyfe." [...]

"For the first time, the Ministry of Health's harm reduction supply and services program will fund crack-pipe components -- such as plastic mouthpieces and filters -- through the B.C. Centre for Disease Control."

Nanaimo is close to where I live, and my rural neighbourhood is routinely looted by marauding crackheads from "town" (including my place -- twice). So my unthinking, kneejerk response to the crack pipe distribution program was "Noooo!!"

But then, that was my first response to safe injection sites. I thought they were a bad idea, not because of any moral opposition to drug use (it should be purely a health problem), but because I couldn't believe addicts would actually use them. The possibility that addicts might stop shooting up in doorways because there was a safe injection site 3 or 4 blocks away just didn't square with what I knew to be true from serious drug users of my acquaintance (in another life). I knew one cocaine user who was arrested shooting up in a Mcdonald's washroom... 2 blocks away from his home. Why he couldn't wait until he'd traversed the 2 blocks to the ultimate safe injection site -- his house -- is one of addiction's many riddles. Many addicts are driven and desperate enough to indulge the moment they acquire their drugs, wherever and whenever that may to be. So I couldn't see how a safe injection site would keep junkies from shooting up in the street, unless they happened to rendezvous with their dealers right outside the place.

Happily, I was wrong. Insite has been operational for 4 years and (much to the disgruntlement of the White House) all indications are that it works. Not only does it provide a safe place for drug users to do what they'd otherwise be doing in a park or alleyway, it gives them access to medical care, counselling, and ultimately, programs that help them leave drugs behind. It removes some of the anonymity that accompanies illicit drug use and makes it so easy for such people to be victimized. It helps stem the overwhelming tide of HIV and Hep-C. What it demonstrably does not do is encourage more drug use. Like the needle exchange programs from which safe injection sites evolved, there's no reason to believe that a crack pipe program would be anything but another effective harm reduction strategy.

Of course, as long as drugs remain illegal and therefore, astronomically expensive, users will continue committing crimes to finance their habits. Harm reduction can't address the problems that our idiotic laws engender. And Stephen Harper's statement about harm reduction -- "It is a second-best strategy at best, because if you remain a drug addict, I don't care how much harm you reduce, you're going to have a short and miserable life." -- is emblematic of that idiocy.