Pubdate: Wed, 16 Aug 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

SAFE INJECTION SAFEST ANSWER WE CAN DEVISE

Harm reduction deserves benefit of the doubt

I suspect this generation of policy-makers, and the previous one
especially, will struggle to explain to their grandchildren just what
on earth they thought they were doing about opioid addiction. I don't
mean the likes of Donald Trump, who seems to think a get tough
policing approach - a "war on drugs," perhaps - might get the job
done. I mean smart, reasonably compassionate Canadians, by no means
all conservatives, whose worries about safe injection sites in
particular look bizarre even today, when people are still using them.

"It'll attract ruba dubs" - as if Vancouver's Downtown Eastside was a
middle-class utopia before Insite set up shop. "There'll be needles in
the streets" - more than if the safe injection site weren't there, you
mean? And, of course: "Addicts should go to treatment instead" - as if
people haven't been trying and failing to get and stay clean this
whole time; as if the alternative, on a day-to-day basis, might be not
waking up the next morning to go get treatment.

To its credit, the Liberal government in Ottawa has loosened the
regulatory reins. There are nine approved "supervised consumption
sites" up and running across the country: five on the Lower Mainland,
one in Kamloops, and three in Montreal. Six more, in Victoria, Ottawa,
Toronto and Montreal, are approved and awaiting inspections. An
additional 10 are in the approval process; four in Edmonton applied
more than three months ago; one in Ottawa has been in the works,
officially, since February.

This looks like progress, and to a great extent it is. But on Sunday,
a group of activists in Toronto implicitly asked another trenchant
question: why does it take so bloody long to set up a supervised
injection site? Why are we waiting? It's just clean needles, chairs
and tables, overdose treatment medication, a nurse and a phone.

So the Toronto Harm Reduction Alliance got itself a basic white tent, 
erected it in Toronto's gritty downtown Moss Park, and put all that 
stuff inside it. Presto: A safe, supervised injection site - just about 
every bit as good, in every way that matters, as one with paid employees 
and an official certificate from the government exempting it from 
federal law. Organizers say one patron overdosed Monday night, and was 
revived. He was just as alive the next morning as he would have been in 
a government-inspected and certified tent; he would have been just as 
dead had he fatally overdosed in an alley or bathroom or apartment.

This isn't the first time harm-reduction advocates have gone rogue. A
similar operation set up shop on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside last
year, both to supplement Insite and provide services that it doesn't -
notably, responding to emergencies from the many people who, for
whatever reason, choose not to shoot up at Insite. "When you're
dealing with emergencies like this, there's no time to wait for the
government bureaucracy to do its job," co-founder Sarah Blyth told
VICE News.

Indeed. If anything, I'm surprised this sort of thing hasn't happened
more often. Toronto officialdom greeted the supervised injection
tent's arrival first with a shrug: police officers were on scene, but
not intervening; neither conservative Mayor John Tory, formerly a safe
injection skeptic, nor his liberal drug policy deputy Joe Cressy, had
anything bad to say about it. Then it responded with action. The
public health board announced it would open an "interim" supervised
injection site in one of the already-approved locations.

That's a pretty solid result for the price of a tent! What was public
health waiting for?

I have written before about how quickly public opinion seems to have
softened on harm reduction and it's not surprising. The death toll is
staggering. Of late a lot more parents have watched in horror as their
"tough love"/"go to rehab" approach failed to save their children from
an overdose death. A lot more of them are white and upper-to-middle
class and well connected, and some of them are politicians. All of
them wish their children could have had just one more day at least,
and that's precisely what harm reduction offers - whether it's safe
injection sites or police officers trained to administer overdose
treatment or prescribing addicts a safe, pharmaceutical-grade product
to shoot up instead of whatever junk is currently making the rounds.

Safe injection having gained widespread acceptance, at long last, I'm
not sure how society avoids accepting all the other ways to save
lives. Obviously, we would rather people not be addicted to opioids.
But if harm reduction requires a compromise in principle, it's one
with a blindingly obvious payoff: living human beings who would
otherwise be dead. It reflects poorly on us that we resisted for so
long.
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MAP posted-by: Matt