Pubdate: Fri, 9 Dec 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/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mdma.htm (Ecstasy) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/hr.htm (Harm Reduction) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?142 (Safe Injecting Rooms) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?137 (Needle Exchange) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htm (Opinion) SAFE SITES IGNORE HARM DRAWN OUTSIDE On one of the worst nights of my life, I spent long hours holding solitary vigil over a young man who'd crashed into a stupor following a bacchanalian cocaine binge. Intently watching his chest rise and fall, terrified that his wildly beating heart would seize -- a not uncommon outcome of such staggering cocaine consumption -- and that I wouldn't be able to save his life. My casual attitude towards drugs -- by which I mean the "recreational" drug use of others, because I do not indulge -- shifted and calcified that evening. While I have sympathy for the addicted, and empathy for those whose lives have been turned upside down by the lies and emotional manipulation at which habitual users excel, I want no part of any undertaking, however well-intentioned, that facilitates such ruin. Toronto City Council, and the agencies it funds, shouldn't even tacitly promote street drugs. To do so, even under the rubric of health and safety vigilance, is a betrayal of all the efforts that have gone into discouraging drug use, weaning addicts off their fix and salvaging neighbourhoods where the drug trade is driving violent crime. After years, decades, of observing how families and communities have been destroyed by illicit drugs, with law enforcement unable to stanch the flow of cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, speed and especially crack -- the high of choice in Toronto, or whatever choice devolves to those with a deadening dependency -- I have come to believe it would behoove us, as a society, to decriminalize the whole lot. Not just marijuana, which was on the order table before Parliament dissolved, but all the contraband substances we snort, smoke, shoot and drop. Address the problem head-on as, exclusively, a health issue, shunting all the multimillions spent on interdiction, litigation and incarceration to intervention and treatment. It won't happen, of course. I understand the complications of so radical a premise; that society has the right to be disapproving, to formalize in the Criminal Code its rejection of a harmful subculture. Even in this la-la fantasy of a nation without drug laws I could never foresee the state -- nor the mini-state of progressive Toronto - -- establishing drug dens and safe crack houses to expedite the consumption of these ravaging narcotics, under the benevolent eye of professional custodians, no less. That is the essence of the most objectionable of the 66 recommendations in an exhaustive drug strategy report presented to council this week. Most of the proposals by the Strategic Advisory Team, led by Councillor Kyle Rae, are sensible and commendable. The most practical call for a 24-hour crisis line, integrated services, more drug enforcement at the local division level (where beat cops have the greatest familiarity with problem neighbourhoods and known traffickers), and residential treatment beds designated specifically for youth -- astonishingly, there are none at the moment. But safe crack kits -- disposable pipes -- when there's no evidence such implements help prevent the spread of HIV, which is ostensibly the rationale? There's no exchange of bodily fluids in smoking crack, unlike heroin injection, and Toronto already has a needle exchange program. Crack kits are no more than a convenience and the city should not be making crack usage more convenient. That's counter-effective. More controversial is a proposal for a feasibility study of "safe injection sites." There are some 50 such hard drug oases around the world, including one in Vancouver, where the drug crisis arises from heroin, not crack. It's only a proposal to further study the scheme. But, believe me, once Toronto's hard-core public health advocates get their foot in this door, opposition to safe injection sites will be cast as calamitous and ignorant-reactionary. It is no such thing. A young man describing himself as a former crack addict wrote me recently to complain that he'd contracted HIV from using a broken glass pipe. It had cut his lip and tainted blood had been exchanged. I've no way of confirming that he either has the virus or that he got it this way, though I doubt it. But his argument was that he should have been provided sanitary utensils and a safe environment in which to ingest his drugs because he was an addict. This assumption of enablement and entitlement strikes me as absurd but it's very much in keeping with the rationalizing philosophy behind safe injection sites. Now addicts are demanding rights that don't exist under any Charter. Anyone who knows a drug addict knows it's always about the drug addict. The world revolves around that person, his or her needs, and those who love him or her fall easily into the role of accommodating sap -- the parents who mortgage their house for a lawyer, the spouse scrambling for a treatment placing, children raising themselves because Mom or Dad is wasted. So it's distressing that the authors of the drug strategy report should promote the view that what's best for the addict -- who must never be subjected to judgmental attitudes -- is paramount. This, even though the preface to the report emphasizes its four core facets: prevention, harm reduction, treatment and enforcement. Yet it wastes little time speculating how safe sites would impact on the neighbourhoods where they're established. Drugs attract crime. Drug users, converging on a known address, are a lure for drug traffickers. Trafficking is a violent business. And drug dependency leads addicts to prostitute themselves to get the money to get the narcotic. This is harm-inducing, not harm-reducing. No one has yet proposed actually making drugs available at these safe injection sites, or supervised consumption rooms, or crack sanctums. But just wait for it. In the meantime, the report's authors remain silent on where and how addicts will obtain the illegal substances they will be able to consume in such a pleasant, judgmental-neutral environment. "The old ways aren't working and we need to try new approaches," said Rae, as he introduced the drug strategy recommendations, which have not yet been put to a vote. While even Rae conceded that crack-raid shelters might not be suitable for Toronto, "we do think it should be on the table for consideration." It's been considered. Now delete it from the report's table of contents. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake