Pubdate: Fri, 07 Jun 2013
Source: StarPhoenix, The (CN SN)
Copyright: 2013 The StarPhoenix
Contact: http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/letters.html
Website: http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/400

INSITE RESPONSE UNWISE POLICY

It's difficult to imagine a more cynical and dangerous response to a
unanimous Supreme Court ruling that Ottawa has a constitutional duty
to protect Canadians than the Harper government's Respect for
Communities Act announced Thursday.

As Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq was holding a press conference to
announce details of the act that sets conditions for new safe
injection sites, the Conservative party was emailing its faithful to
organize opposition to such facilities.

The legislation ostensibly is in response to the ruling that said
persistent federal efforts to close Insite, Canada's only supervised

drug injection site in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, was a violation
of the facility users' constitutional rights "to life and to security
of the person."

The high court unambiguously stated: "(T) he effect of denying the
services of Insite to the population it serves and the correlative
increase in the risk of death and disease to injection drug users is
grossly disproportionate to any benefit that Canada might derive from
presenting a uniform stance on the possession of narcotics."

If the Harper government took seriously the responsibility spelled out
in the ruling, it would have been a no-brainer to draft an appropriate
law that protects communities while it fosters science-based best
practices. But the government has twisted around the ruling's intent
so as to make it almost impossible for other community groups, health
organizations or local or provincial governments to emulate the
success that has made Insite an international model.

The new federal law puts in place onerous, redundant and costly
requirements, along with a dozen conditions that include seeking
consent from a broad range of interest groups, any one of which could
be used as an excuse to deny establishing a new site or renewing
Insite's licence.

Among the requirements is approval from the head of police services.
And to make it clear how much a challenge that will pose, Tom
Stamatakis, president of the Canadian Police Association, said
Thursday that it's unlikely his members would ever approve of a site.
He also discounted as untrue the many scientific studies that were
accepted by the Supreme Court as indicating there was no increase in
crime in the area around Insite.

As Julio Montaner, director of the British Columbia Centre for
Excellence in HIV/AIDS, noted, in spite of Insite's success at saving
lives and staunching the spread of blood-borne infections, evidence
suggests the injection site has "won the battle but lost the war."

Saskatchewan officials claim that this province's drug problem doesn't
warrant supervised injection sites because intravenous drug users here
mostly do it in their homes. Yet Saskatchewan's relatively high HIV
infection rates and the tens of thousands of needles found scattered
on Saskatoon streets and alleyways each spring suggest that it is
prudent to have a more open-minded review of the situation and to
closely examine alternative strategies.

In spite of the Harper government's roadblocks, Saskatchewan has
economic, moral and constitutional reasons to protect all its
residents - including intravenous drug addicts. The best way to do
that is to heed scientific evidence.
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