BACK TO TABLE OF CONTENTS

FREE HEROIN FOR ADDICTS PROGRAM TO BEGIN

A formal announcement has now been made that a $7 million program will provide free heroin from doctors to 125 heroin addicts in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal this coming summer (2002). (See Reality, September/October 2001, "Who Is In Charge of Our Drug Policies?", p. 6.)

In return for the free heroin injections twice a day, or - if they wish, three times a day - for a year - the addicts are required only to stay in the hospital for 30 minutes after each injection for observation. Then they are free to stumble out of the hospital in their drugged state to do what? Maybe drive their car until they return for their next "fix"? The absurdity of this proposal is that such programs were tried over 30 years ago in Europe, with disastrous results. Yet, Minister of Health, Allan Rock, who sees himself as being on the cutting edge of modernity, is fearlessly plunging ahead with this senseless and dangerous program. He apparently thinks it is a "progressive" move - certain to bring him accolades from the fashionable crowd. It apparently does not matter to Mr. Rock that by implementing this outrageous program, the addict's drug addiction is increased and his dysfunction deepened, with no possibility of rehabilitation. Not only does the addict's life suffer, so do those of the addict's family and society. Therapy and rehabilitation are forgotten in Rock's race for so-called "progressive" policies.

An editorial in the National Post (November 17, 2001), explains why Allan Rock's "fashionable" idea to provide free heroin for addicts is not only 30 years out of date, but also why it has been abandoned elsewhere.

The following is a reprint of the National Post editorial:

Drug Bust - National Post editorial - November 17, 2001

… Trust Allan Rock to glom onto a politically fashionable idea … 30 years late. On Wednesday, the Health Minister announced he was prepared to fund a safe-injection site for drug addicts in Vancouver, and to change the Criminal Code to make such a den legal, both ideas that are vigorously advocated by Philip Owen, Vancouver's Mayor. Mr. Rock insists his approval of a park or shelter in which addicts, principally heroin junkies, can shoot-up 'is not a law enforcement issue.' Rather, he says, these addicts 'have lost control of their lives and they have secondary illnesses,' such as HIV/AIDS and hepatitis. It does no good to round them up and jail them, without also 'doing something about the underlying illness of addiction.'

Mr. Rock is correct insofar as drug addiction is best thought of as a health problem, rather than a criminal problem. But if his objective is to help addicts break their habits, facilitating their addictions by providing safe havens for engaging in heroin and cocaine use will likely do more harm than good.

Rotterdam Municipal Council in the Netherlands reports that the percentage of its 15- to 19-year olds hooked on either heroin or cocaine has nearly doubled, to about 4%, since the late 1980s, when it began its free-drug, safe-haven program. Since 1991, when safe-injection sites became common in the Netherlands, the Dutch Criminal Intelligence Service reports a 25% increase in drug-related gun murders and a sharp rise in robberies in neighbourhoods housing one of the 50 official methadone clinics or injection shelters.

Zurich closed its infamous needle park in 1992, after the police and citizenry became fed up with public urination and defecation, prostitution, open sex, pan handling, drug peddling, loud fights and violent crimes. The addicts were moved to a converted train station, which was closed in 1995 when the problems from the park reproduced themselves.

So far, more than two dozen major European cities have signed the 1994 European Cities Against Drugs declaration opposing safe-injection sites and free distribution of drugs. Officials from Berlin, Stockholm, London, Paris, Moscow and Oslo have embraced the principle that 'the answer does not lie in making harmful drugs more accessible, cheaper and socially acceptable. Attempts to do this have not proved successful.' Such initiatives, in fact, 'increase our problems.'

Absent the European data, Mr. Rock's enthusiasm for Vancouver's safe-injection proposal might seem reasonable, or at least worth a try. Vancouver typically witnesses 300 - 400 overdose deaths a year. But a failure is a failure, and the empirical evidence demonstrates that safe-injection sites simply don't work. The best way to turn drug addicts around is not to give them free drugs - it is therapy backed up by the threat of imprisonment.

BACK TO TABLE OF CONTENTS