Pubdate: Fri, 08 Apr 2016 Source: Ottawa Sun (CN ON) Copyright: 2016 Canoe Limited Partnership Contact: http://www.ottawasun.com/letter-to-editor Website: http://www.ottawasun.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/329 Author: David Krayden Page: 8 HARM REDUCTION AN ORWELLIAN RESPONSE The concept of harm reduction is the basis of the proposed Ottawa insite. Harm reduction might sound like a relatively mundane idea - providing an environment that renders intrinsically dangerous acts and habits safer - but its amplification and application over the past decade has made harm reduction a synonym for addiction facilitation. It has not only been applied to drug use but seemingly unrelated ventures as prostitution as well. Alcoholics can now experience controlled drinking during substance abuse treatment. Regardless of the poison, the argument remains the same: though the activity might not be advantageous, with the proper structure, we can make it safer and save lives. The liberals may have paved some good intentions here but arguably harm reduction has gone off the road and into the ditch. Before the injection site debate arose, Ottawa was no stranger to another form of harm reduction that was also proposed in the interests of public health but which clearly promoted illegal drug use. The crack pipe program, whereby crack addicts could obtain "clean" crack pipes instead of using "dirty" ones, was initiated by Ottawa city council in 2005 but discontinued in 2007 after two years of negative media reports and public outrage culminated in a motion to terminate this social experiment. Many people in Ottawa found the very idea of distributing crack pipes, clean or otherwise, to addicts as outrageous. After all, here we were facilitating illegal drug use at taxpayer expense! Was there something wrong with this "solution" or had common sense just died in Ottawa? Well, the provincial government, then as now, didn't much care for common sense or the sensibilities of Ottawa residents. The McGuinty government restarted the program with the urgency the Ontario Liberals only apply to government waste and stupidity. As with an injection site, the primary objection to providing "free" crack pipes (free for the addict anyway) was that the city was sanctioning and promoting an illegal and lethal habit. Are you really reducing the spread of HIV (it is in fact impossible to know whether fluctuations of disease rates are directly or indirectly a consequence of "cleaner" drug use), or are you simply making it an easier choice to smoke crack and end your life prematurely? For most people, who haven't been indoctrinated by harm reduction heresy, the answer is simple: safe injection sites aren't safe and free crack pipes are neither free, nor do they make smoking crack anything approaching safe. Throughout the injection site debate, not only here in Ottawa but in Toronto as well, both opponents and advocates have pointed to Vancouver to support their arguments. What is the truth? You will hear the same arguments from liberal academics and health workers on the West Coast about how crime and disease are plummeting because addicts can shoot up unmolested by police and under the watchful eyes of medical attendants who will prevent an overdose. But these fervent acolytes of social re-engineering rarely ever have to live at ground zero of their social experiment. The people who do reside there will tell you what happens when you create a critical mass of drug abuse; how the adjacent streets are littered with drug paraphernalia and lined with users; how the site itself acts as a magnet to bring new addicts into the vicinity. One national television network pontificated that "in less than two years, addicts in the city of Ottawa could have a safe, clean environment to do drugs." How pleasant. Perhaps we can also provide a safe, clean environment for a host of other toxic, debilitating and febrile activities that the morally relativistic liberals imagine can be transformed into acceptable pursuits. For critics, this is political correctness gone mad; harm reduction advocates are so intent upon minimizing the damage that they're willing to sanitize or even ignore the problem - and for many people, that's the fundamental disconnect with the concept. - --- MAP posted-by: Matt