Pubdate: Wed, 08 Jun 2005
Source: Salmon Arm Observer (CN BC)
Copyright: 2005 Salmon Arm Observer
Contact:  http://www.saobserver.net/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1407
Author: Tom Fletcher

INJECTION SITES SIMPLY HIDE PROBLEM

Victoria is the second city in B.C. to get in line for the brave new
world of "safe injection sites," as they are persistently referred to
in the mainstream media.

If it goes ahead, our quaint old capital will also be the second city
in Canada to embrace this trendy European strategy. Or North America
for that matter, since so far only Vancouver has taken the plunge.

Once this questionable bit of social engineering spreads to two
cities, look for it to pop up in other B.C. communities that have a
significant hard drug problem, which is to say most of them.

They're already talking about it in Kamloops.The idea of inviting
junkies off the street to a nurse-supervised clinical environment was
nurtured for years in the hothouse of Vancouver city politics, where
the last election was decided mainly on urgent demands to "do
something" about the horror show of dealers and dopers haunting the
streets of Vancouver.

Like many debates in our largest city, this one develops in a fog of
euphemisms and jargon that are calculated to avoid the tough questions.

The term "safe injection site" isn't just a euphemism. It's an
outright lie. You'll notice that doctors and senior bureaucrats say
"supervised injection site." They're not foolish enough to call these
places safe. The heroin or cocaine that is used there is bought from
the same street dealers who have always provided it, and there are no
efforts to test its potency, its purity or for that matter its drain
cleaner or mouse poison content. My first question was, why Victoria?
The place has its share of drug problems, no doubt, but it hardly
swarms with nodded-out junkies and its car-theft rate is seldom in the
headlines. Heck, even the panhandlers are cleaner and more polite than
most places I've seen. Why not Surrey, or New Westminster, or Burnaby,
or Prince George, where street prostitution and urban crime are more
prevalent? Well, the city and the Vancouver Island Health Authority
got a $50,000 grant from Health Canada so now they've got to spend it.
Victoria Mayor Alan Lowe recently left his city's teeming slums to
take the obligatory fact-finding tour of Bern, Switzerland and the
red-light district of Frankfurt, where he was impressed by the array
of medical, social work and housing support for addicts. The European
tour confirmed that local residents have noticed less drug activity on
the streets, where public parks had been taken over by free-for-all
drug dealing and shooting up. Massive expenditure of public funds
creates a superficial perception of cleaner streets that pays off at
the polls. That's great if you're a politician. It's not so good if
you're a junkie. MP Randy White, a long-time critic of injection
sites, pointed out last year that overdose deaths actually went up
after InSite opened in Vancouver. InSite officials now say that
between March and August of 2004, they made 262 referrals to addiction
counseling and 78 to detox programs. But they don't know how many
people actually got off drugs, or even if they really tried. Here's
the big problem with shoot-up sites, and giving away heroin for that
matter. This approach doesn't help people get off drugs. It helps them
keep using. 
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MAP posted-by: SHeath(DPFFlorida)