Pubdate: Wed, 19 Oct 2005 Source: East York Mirror (CN ON) Section: City Views Copyright: 2005 East York Mirror Contact: http://www.insidetoronto.ca/to/easty/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2219 Author: David Nickle IS T.O. GOING TO THE DOPE USERS? For those who maintained that a vote for David Miller was a vote for dope-smoking, free-loving Commie freaks, last week's unveiling of the city's drug strategy must seem a vindication. The strategy has all sorts of elements - its 66 recommendations encompass a host of preventative measures including bolstering drug abuse prevention in schools and going after marijuana grow houses more effectively. But that's not the part that is even now sticking in the craws of the likes of Ward 2 Councillor Rob Ford (Etobicoke North) and other right-wingers. A big component of the drug strategy is a practice known as "harm reduction". Essentially, harm reduction encompasses a recognition that drug and alcohol addiction is a part of the human condition - not something that, as the old Nancy Reagan line goes, we can just say no to, and thereby expect to eradicate. So rather than fight a losing war to rescue people who will be less grateful than an Iraqi freedom fighter, harm reduction attempts to do what it says: make sure that people who are stuck in this lifestyle are protected from the health risks: AIDS, malnutrition, what-have-you. So the strategy has components that are a bit more controversial. It asks council to endorse the decriminalization of possession of small amounts of marijuana. It wants a study looking into safe injection sites or places where addicts of crack cocaine can safely smoke. It recommends providing paraphernalia for crack users - a service that won't likely prevent the spread of disease according to Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. David McKeown, but will help bring a marginalized group of addicts in greater contact with public health workers. Toward that end, the strategy speaks kindly of those who are living with these addictions. In years past - or indeed, any time prior to last Thursday - we might have comfortably called those people drug abusers. But the report notes that the term 'abuse' is pejorative. So throughout, those with a drug problem are known as drug users. There is a recommendation to look at ways to de-stigmatize those addicted to crack cocaine and other harder drugs. It's all a tough sell. As others have pointed out, Toronto Public Health and the city has no problem stigmatizing all sorts of activities: smoking tobacco in public, serving restaurant food out of a dirty kitchen, spraying chemical weed killers on a private lawn. It does so because the activities themselves cause a public harm - to the environment, to the lungs of non-smokers, to fine diners' delicate digestive tracts. To suggest that crack addicts and the criminal infrastructure that supports their habit don't cause significant public harm is ludicrous. The premise of the drug strategy is not, mind you, to be consistent with the mood of the Toronto Board of Health. It is, as McKeown described it, relentlessly pragmatic. If stigmatizing drug, er, users makes them harder to reach, never mind how the tobacco, er, users feel, stop stigmatizing. If drug, er, users want help quitting, fine - otherwise, help them live as well as they can in the meantime. The trouble, of course, is that the drug strategy is not just a drug strategy. It's a public statement. In a city fearful in the wake of a spike in gun violence and worried about even higher rates of crime, that the consumption of illegal substances - the abuse of them, not to mince words - is something that our leadership accepts. Now that statement might be appropriate. Certainly the declaration of the War on Drugs in the 1980s didn't do much good for drug users - maybe this will be more effective.