Pubdate: Wed, 18 May 2011 Source: Vancouver Courier (CN BC) Copyright: 2011 Vancouver Courier Contact: http://www.vancourier.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/474 Author: Tom Sandborn, Contributing Writer ADDICTS WILL DIE IF INJECTION SITE CLOSES Insite Court Challenge Based on Conservative Ideology While B.C. is experiencing an epidemic of heroin overdose deaths, the federal government is using our tax dollars to mount a Supreme Court challenge in an attempt to close down Vancouver's pioneering Insite supervised injection centre. This is a move that combines ideological bone-headedness with moral and fiscal stupidity. Our tax dollars are being wasted on an attempt to destroy a clinical model that saves lives, fights addiction without punishing addicts and reduces public outlays on emergency medicine and law enforcement. Extra strength heroin has killed nearly three times as many people in B.C. this year as last. Already this year the province has recorded 21 overdose deaths, in contrast to eight such deaths last year. More are predicted. It is highly unlikely, however, that any of the upcoming deaths will occur at Insite, where last month professional staff dealt successfully with 36 overdoses, according to an Insite nurse who spoke to the Province newspaper. There has never been an overdose death at Insite, a record that captures only part of its harm reduction impact. Beyond overdose first aid, the supervised injection centre helps prevent the spread of HIV and hepatitis C infections among injection drug users, and refers users who are ready to quit to detox and recovery services. Any fool could see that Insite is a model that should be reproduced across the province and the country. But the Harper Conservatives are not just any fools. They are ideologically committed to "tough on crime" rhetoric and law and order posturing, and so, despite the huge body of research that illustrates the benefits of the harm reduction model and of Insite itself, the HarperCons are mounting an expensive and probably fruitless exercise at the Supreme Court. They hope that the nation's top court will reverse decisions in the courts below that ruled any attempt to close Insite and deny Vancouver addicts access to this life saving service would be unconstitutional. At best, this will be a pointless and meanspirited waste of public money. At worst, if the Supreme Court endorses the approach being taken by the Harper government and allows it to shut down Insite, the costs will be horrendous. More addicts will die, and more overdoses on the streets will further tax our over-extended emergency wards and law enforcement personnel. Some addicts who might have found their way to recovery through the non-judgmental care available at Insite will remain lost in their addictions, and more families will be left to mourn for their lost loved ones. Mayor Gregor Robertson recently joined with five former Vancouver mayors in calling on the federal government to cease and desist from its anti-Insite campaign. Divided on many questions, the mayors were unanimous in supporting the harm reduction work done at Insite. Last year the Canadian Medical Association Journal published research that showed that Insite reduces the harms of drug addiction, increases uptake into drug treatment and rehabilitation programs, and helps reduce adverse community impacts of addiction in various ways, such as decreasing used needles. Despite this and many other studies with similar findings, the federal government is going to the wall in its attempt to get its Dirty Harry approach to law enforcement endorsed by the courts. The whole sorry business reminds me of the classic play and film Inherit the Wind, a dramatization of the infamous "Scopes Monkey Trial," in which civil liberties lawyer Clarence Darrow defended an American school teacher being prosecuted in Tennessee for teaching Darwin's theory of evolution. Like the upcoming Supreme Court hearings on the Insite case, the American trial pitted science and sanity against ferociously held ideology. Despite Darrow's brilliant defence, the Tennessee court found Scopes guilty, and Americans are still, many decades later, pitted against each other in battles over evolution, "intelligent design" and the degree to which our irrational faith commitments ought to direct public policy. We can only hope that our Supreme Court doesn't echo that long ago Tennessee jury and opt for ideology over sanity. If Harper and his policy advisers succeed in their attempt to destroy Insite, our city and some of its most vulnerable citizens will truly inherit the wind. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard R Smith Jr.