Pubdate: Wed, 11 Jan 2017
Source: National Post (Canada)
Copyright: 2017 Canwest Publishing Inc.
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/wEtbT4yU
Website: http://www.nationalpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/286
Author: Chris Selley
Page: A4

OPPOSITION TO INJECTION SITES WANES

Sometimes half measures are the best we can hope for

One of the problems with being politically conservative in the most
basic sense of the word - genetically suspicious of change - is that
you can wind up looking lost and silly and backward when mainstream
opinion on any given topic slingshots past you, as it often does in
Canada.

It only took about five years for opposition to same-sex marriage to
go from a mainstream Liberal position to fodder for Liberal attack
ads. About 15 minutes after the assisted dying law took effect, the
news was full of people complaining children and people living in
remote rural areas might be denied access.

We may now be at that point with safe-injection sites.

In Vancouver, Insite has been chugging along for 13 years, fending off
court challenges and skeptics by … well, by saving the lives of 100
per cent of the hundreds of people who have overdosed on its premises.
But the model hasn't really spread, and not just because Ottawa has
made it difficult. People like Ottawa mayor Jim Watson insist every
penny spent on these facilities must go toward addiction treatment.
People like Toronto city councillor Stephen Holyday argue governments
shouldn't provide a venue for illegal activity lest it sanction that
activity.

Health Minister Jane Philpott supports supervised injection
facilities. So do Montreal mayor Denis Coderre and his Toronto
counterpart John Tory, formerly a skeptic. (Obviously we should offer
treatment but in the meantime many are "needlessly dying alone," Tory
aptly observed.)

The number of opiate overdoses is pretty staggering: from January to
October of last year, Vancouver officials attributed 374 fatalities to
fentanyl alone. Toronto's problem is not nearly so great, but it is
growing in leaps and bounds. In the United States, the opioid epidemic
takes 15,000 lives a year.

In Toronto, things certainly haven't moved quickly: it was nearly six
months ago that City Council approved the opening of supervised
injection sites in three existing medical facilities. But this week,
provincial health minister Eric Hoskins signalled there was funding to
proceed. As soon as the feds sign off, it should finally be ready to
go.

And the opposition in Canada's largest city has been remarkably tepid.
The vote at City Council was 363. The police are fine with it. The
provincial Tories simply insisted on community consultations (which
there were); interim federal Conservative leader Rona Ambrose simply
insisted the law be followed (which it is being).

What opposition there has been came off as rote and weak: in addition
to his general opposition, Holyday complained the facilities wouldn't
keep long enough hours to help that many people. (Pick a lane, man!)
Ambrose's health critic at the time, Kellie Leitch, noted "the drugs
that are used at these sites … are dangerous and addictive" - which is
rather the point. Indeed, many harm reduction opponents sound like
they've signed some kind of contract binding them to oppose the
practice, and are scrambling to justify it.

When conservatives argue supervised injection doesn't free people of
addiction or society of addiction's tragic and costly burden, they are
quite correct. But then, treatment programs aren't getting that job
done either. And there is no policy on the table that would solve one
of the biggest problems here, which is that people can never be sure
what they're injecting.

Fentanyl isn't inherently deadly. It just happens to be vastly more
powerful than most other opioids on the street. And its emergence as a
leading overdose killer is in part thanks to efforts to stop people
abusing much less dangerous drugs like oxycodone: "abuse-proof"
versions, which can't be ground up, drove people away from a
pharmaceutical grade product and toward whatever might today be on the
market as "heroin." Well played, everyone!

If you're a politician and you genuinely want to solve big,
intractable problems like that, you're going to have to propose some
pretty radical policy. We could, for example, provide addicts with
pharmaceutical-grade drugs, on more or less exactly the grounds the
Liberals use to support legalizing marijuana: people know what they're
getting and it shuts down the black market.

I don't expect I'll live to see that; I'm not even sure I think it's a
good idea. But in the meantime, politicians could at least admit
intractable problems are intractable and support half-measures. If
hundreds of people are dying easily preventable deaths and your
political orthodoxy prevents you from supporting a demonstrably
effective remedial measure, maybe there's something wrong with your
political orthodoxy. Maybe, pretty soon, you're going to look lost,
silly and backward.
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MAP posted-by: Matt