Pubdate: Mon, 19 May 2008
Source: BC Catholic, The (CN BC)
Copyright: 2008 The BC Catholic
Contact: http://bcc.rcav.org/letter.htm
Website: http://bcc.rcav.org/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/4764
Author: Paul Schratz
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htm (Opinion)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Insite (Insite)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Downtown+Eastside

ADDICTS DESERVE BETTER THAN INSITE

The federal government announced $10 million last week for new 
programs to treat drug addiction in the Downtown Eastside.

Included in the spending is the opening of 20 new beds to offer 
prostitutes a safe haven while helping them to beat the addictions 
that forced them into prostitution.

The story didn't make it onto the front page of a single daily paper 
in Vancouver.

In fact everyone buried it, in one case as a two-inch brief under a 
short item about a suspicious looking drug bong in Saanich.

Funding to help prostitutes get off the street just isn't as juicy a 
story as those about legalized brothels or red-light districts, nor 
is it as fascinating as the question of whether the legalized drug 
shooting gallery known as Insite will receive the legal extension so 
long hoped for by some drug advocates.

At the press conference where the federal health minister announced 
the drug funding, reporters asking questions focused almost entirely 
on Insite instead.

They had some tough questions about whether the federal government 
was using the announcement as a way to defer criticism should it 
ultimately close Insite.

How odd. Drug addiction and prostitution are wreaking devastation in 
the Downtown Eastside. The addictive lifestyles of drug addiction and 
prostitution ensnare individuals in cycles of poverty, crime, and often death.

Yet when government announces a program to help drug addicted 
prostitutes beat their addictions and get off the street, the 
response is to ignore it and to ask why a program that has failed to 
do what it was supposed to is not being further promoted.

The obvious reason, of course, is that programs that help individuals 
beat the vices that enslave them don't fit the standard mould for 
dealing with vices.

The zeal to have Insite's licence extended is more about backing away 
from a prosecution approach to drugs than it is to helping addicts 
beat their deadly habit.

It seems to me the arguments for and against Insite have always been misguided.

As with the issue of safe sex and condoms, the central question is 
not how effective Insite is, although we may care about effectiveness 
because we care about the people these "solutions" are aimed at. 
Insite's future should be determined by its inherent qualities and 
its overall impact on our society.

Purely on those points, it fails. It gives a green light to drug 
abuse, hides a moral problem from public view, and helps fosters a 
sense that drug addiction is under control as a public policy issue.

Even if Insite completely transformed the Downtown Eastside, as 
opposed to actually contributing to the misery there, it would remain 
the wrong approach, for precisely the same reason that moving your 
Tylenol to the low shelf in your medicine cabinet is not the way to 
prevent children from falling off a stool when reaching for the top shelf.

Unfortunately this is the way we've become accustomed to responding 
to destructive behaviours. Rather than trying to prevent them, we're 
content to mitigate the harm associated with them.

So instead of addressing prostitution, we promote red light 
districts. Rather than teach drug awareness, we encourage 
legalization. We throw condoms at children as an alternative to 
abstinence. And when car thieves keep crashing while being pursued by 
police, we tell the police not to give chase any more.

Christian charity requires that we exhibit compassion in our lives. 
It calls us to go out in search of the lost sheep and to rescue them, 
not to simply pat them on the head while they go astray.

It means finding ways so the sheep don't go astray, rather than 
telling the shepherd not to rescue them.

Insite has moved a public drug horror indoors, rendering it 
"Outofsite." Turning it into a more comfortable procedure as far as 
we're concerned, however, also helps to absolve us of responsibility 
to help addicts.

The federal government's approach to drugs and prostitution makes 
much more sense than Insite's does, from a moral and a practical perspective. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake