Pubdate: Mon, 17 Oct 2005 Source: Toronto Star (CN ON) Copyright: 2005 The Toronto Star Contact: http://www.thestar.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/456 Author: Rosie Dimanno Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine) WHY WON'T CITY STIGMATIZE CRACKHEADS? But Smokers Seen As Social Pariahs, Public Health Risk New Drug Strategy Eschews Term 'Drug Abuse' As Pejorative So let me get this straight: I can't smoke cigarettes in Toronto but I can smoke crack? The former is a public health risk, nipped in the butt at nearly every indoor venue, with bossy and vilifying interdiction campaigns that have transformed smokers into social pariahs. But the latter is a personal choice that ought not to be stigmatized by a judgmental society. I am not making this up. I am merely taking to their presumptive conclusions some of the recommendations advanced in a drug strategy scheme unveiled at city hall on Friday. So very non-condemnatory of drug use is the report by the Toronto Drug Strategy Advisory Committee that its members have quite deliberately eschewed even the term "drug abuse" as inherently pejorative. The word "abuse," the report states upfront, "perpetuates social stigma and judgment which can marginalize and alienate people from the very supports they need." These supports could, come the day, include "supervised injection sites or inhalation rooms" in Toronto -- inhalation rooms because crack cocaine is the most frequently used street drug in this city -- as posited by Recommendation No. 55. That recommendation does not overtly call for the establishment of such 100 per cent toleration zones. It merely asks the city, in partnership with the Centre for Addiction & Mental Health and community groups, to further study that option in developing strategies to address the "stigma and discrimination toward people who use substances." The report's authors do acknowledge that supervised consumption sites -- a 50-cent euphemism for what most of us would call a crack house -- would provoke tremendous controversy, as indeed the matter did, does, within the committee's own membership. Clearly, there was not enough agreement from within its ranks to make a bold, unambiguous proposal. But it's just as clear, from reading this section, that the committee wants to venture further in the direction of what I can only describe as legal crack arcades, which can only be created, in this country, after obtaining formal exclusion under the federal Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. It's been done already in some 50 jurisdictions around the world, and, as of this past July, in Vancouver, where the issue is heroin rather than crack. It is not that I wish to see drug addicts busted, because the last thing a crackhead needs is the burden of a criminal record, or incarceration in penal institutions where drugs are so easily obtained. There was a time when I believed that decriminalizing all drug use was the wisest approach - -- treating abuse as a health issue, not a matter for law enforcement. But I was taken aback, on my last trip to Amsterdam -- where soft drugs are legal, marijuana and hash for sale in drug cafes -- at how very stupid much of the mellowed-out adult populace had become, so sluggish, slack, slothful. The potency of these "soft drugs" has increased dramatically, as laced as they are with THC. This is not your father's ganja, as I discovered while on assignment for a story about legalizing drugs. (It took me three days to recover from my "research" and I may very well be the only Canadian reporter who has charged spliffs and hash brownies to her expense account.) Further, despite assurances that this wouldn't occur, the use of hard drugs in Amsterdam has skyrocketed, the city crawling with wasted junkies. There are compelling social reasons, I now concede, for rejecting the whole premise of legalizing drugs as the lesser of two evils. And, as Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair noted last week -- he is utterly opposed to the notion of crack sanctuaries -- no one in this country gets charged for possession of small amounts of marijuana and hash any more. The personal use rule of thumb is being respected, largely because police forces have bigger drug problems to deal with, particularly the gun violence and organized crime that is driven by the drug appetite. It is troubling that the drug advisory committee pays minimal attention to that drug-perpetuated violence in Toronto, especially after the lethal summer we've just been through. Or frames it within the context of how neighbourhoods could be made safer if some of this activity was more properly supervised -- yes, even in a smoke-up drop-in environment, envisioned as a one-stop shopping emporium where addicts could also obtain clean needles and condoms and counselling, provided that counselling was non-invasive and moral-neutral. "Effective harm reduction approaches are pro-active, offer a comprehensive range of coordinated, user-friendly, client-centered and flexible problems and services and provide a supportive, non-judgmental environment." The report does make many sound recommendations -- from providing better addiction services in prisons to reinstating addiction as an eligible disability under the Ontario Disability Support Program -- even if this does all boil down to a great deal more public money spent on intervention and the mushrooming of the anti-drug bureaucracy, indeed with the added creation of a new drug secretariat for Toronto. But it's the tone of the thing that I find most objectionable -- the de facto premise that our society has no right to project any judgmental values because, if you follow this logic, it's this very disapproval that prevents addicts from straightening out. I would think it's the other way around. Making it easier to obtain and use crack, for instance (which, unlike heroin, doesn't involve the shared use of flesh-piercing implements that spread HIV and Hepatitis C), would not discourage such ruinous drug use. Rather, the message would seem to be that we, as a community, are prepared to facilitate your drug problem. It's perfectly reasonable for any society to express its opprobrium for a drug scourge that makes victims of us all, be it the destruction of residential neighbourhoods or by wayward bullets that strike children. And it's hypocritical to say that public revulsion is counter-effective in stigmatizing drug abuse when these are the very same people -- check the public health authorities involved in preparing the report -- who sanctioned such bullying tactics against smokers, and who claim their campaign has been marvellously effective. Sorry, you can't have it both ways. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom