While in power, the Liberal government worked quietly to liberalize Canada's drug laws. It knew it had to move very carefully and discretely since the Liberals realized that these changes would not be acceptable to many Canadians.
The Liberals first move was to bring in legislation to liberalize the marijuana law to allow legal possession of up to 15 grams (approximately 20 tokes or joints). Fortunately this legislation died when the Conservatives formed the government after the January 2006 federal election.
Another initiative the Liberals undertook was to establish, in 2003, as a so-called "pilot project", a supervised drug injection site in Vancouver, the first in North America. At this site, addicts could shoot-up in a medically supervised setting run by the government. It was located in Vancouver's tawdry east side where drug dealers freely operate, where alcoholics and prostitutes circulate in abundance, and where assaults and theft, etc., are a regular occurrence.
The Vancouver drug injection site was licensed to operate on a trial basis for a three year period, at the end of which a decision would be made based on its "success" (a false assumption), as well as whether further such sites should be established in other cities across the country.
There was no way that the Vancouver drug injection site would not have been proclaimed a great success, since those supporting liberalized drug policies have already portrayed it as a success in newspaper articles, "studies", letters to the editor etc. This is because the real purpose of the site is to use it as a foothold for the further expansion of drug usage in Canada.
It is significant that demand for such a site did not come about through public pressure or grass roots communities. On the contrary, it was demanded by those who support wide access to drugs and who used it as a planned course of deliberate gradual infiltration to widen access to drugs.
A drug injection site is based on the highly controversial ideology called "harm reduction" which views drug use as not only inevitable, but as a lifestyle option, a pleasure to be pursued, even a human right. This understanding of drug usage, which regards drug use as a choice, and considers the government's role as only helping reduce the consequences of that choice, is based on the perspective that since individuals are going to use drugs anyway, why not enable them to do so in a safe medical environment? Harm reduction supporters have little or no interest in reducing the incidence of drug use or the recovery of the addict from the addiction. This was spelled out in a text, written by one of Canada's leading harm reduction ideologists who stated:
… Although harm reduction is at odds with the dominant legal-sanction-based policy, the middle range and pragmatic nature of harm reduction measures makes it possible for certain harm reduction strategies to be tolerated, accepted, or even incorporated by legal authorities, without completely dismantling the counter-productive punitive policy. The support and cooperation of the police in needle-exchange programs for injection drug users is one of several examples of the diffusion of genuine harm reduction elements into the existing drug policy, enabling change to occur, and thereby bringing about gradual policy reforms.
That is, a harm-reduction initiative, including the Vancouver drug injection site, requires only an exception to the current drug laws but not an outright change in the laws. However, in order to expand and replicate these initiatives, such measures as drug injection sites ultimately require forms of drug legalization. Legalization and regulation of drugs are central and interwoven into the harm reduction ideology.
It was necessary, therefore, to promote a positive image of the injection site. Thus, sympathetic evaluators, who support open access to drugs, have overstated their positive findings of the site, downplayed or ignored negative findings, or reported meaningless findings in order to give the overall impression that the facility is successful.
The truth about the Vancouver injection site is that since it was established in 2003, there has been little or no reduction in transmission of blood borne diseases (AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases, Hepatitis C), no reduction in public disorder (crimes such as prostitution, break-in, drug dealing), nor has there been a reduction in overdose deaths in the Vancouver area. Moreover, there has been only very sporadic use of the facility by the addicts and little or no movement of the drug users to go into long-term treatment and recovery. In short, the supervised injection facility had led to higher drug use, crime, public disorder and homelessness and has done absolutely nothing to assist the addict, except to cause him/her to fall deeper into addiction.
Conservative Government Policy on Drug Use
The Conservative government apparently does not support using taxpayers' money to facilitate the continuing consumption of illegal substances by way of drug injection sites. This conclusion can be drawn from the March 2007 budget, which allotted $64 million over two years for police enforcement, treatment of addicts, and drug prevention (education). This allotment was broken down as follows: $22 million for law enforcement to crack down on marijuana growth operations and to catch and convict drug dealers; $32 million for drug treatment programs, including money for research aimed at treating crystal methamphetamine addicts. Another $10 million was allotted for a prevention campaign for young people and their parents. Significantly, no money was allotted for the harm reduction site in Vancouver or elsewhere.
Conservative Government's Specific Response to Vancouver Injection Site
In September 2006, Health Minister Tony Clement extended the license for the Vancouver site to continue in operation for another 18 months only - until December 2007. The Conservative government, therefore, has to make a final decision on the Vancouver site soon. In view of this pending decision, there are already newspaper articles, as well as alleged "scientific" papers (which they are not) promoting the supposed success of the Vancouver site. The pro drug legalization crowd (including Perry Kendall, British Columbia Provincial Health Officer) is pumping out its propaganda, claiming that harm reduction is the only positive response to drug addiction and that Canada's "war on drugs" has failed. The latter is patently false. The current data in Canada shows that use of cannabis by the Canadian public over age 15 is 14%. For all other illegal drugs, prevalence remains from 0.5 to 3%. These rates are very low compared to the 30% range for tobacco use and about 80% range for alcohol use. Clearly, our drug laws hold overall rates of illegal drug use at substantially lower levels than their legal counterparts. It also stands to reason that Canadians benefit from these lower rates of illegal substance use since they lower public health and social costs for the taxpayer.
Moreover, getting off drugs should be the first, not the last step for addicts. Sweden has accomplished significant success with drug use because it employs a programme of compulsory drug treatment for addicts. As a result, Sweden has among Europe's lowest crime, disease, medical and social problems stemming from drug addiction, according to the United Nations office of Drugs and Crime in its 2006 analysis. Canada would be well advised to examine the Swedish drug policy with a view of adapting it here, instead of accepting the false propaganda from the drug legalization movement.
As stated in an editorial in the National Post (May 9, 2007),
… safe injection sites (SIS) don't work. And they send the wrong message, too, promoting disrespect for the rule of law by having government facilitating the consumption of illegal substances.
Too bad most of the proof to back these positive claims come from SIS proponents or the academics who devise harm-reduction theories. Police here, and in Europe (where they have lots of experience with SISs) tell a very different tale.
Currently there are more than three dozen major European cities on record against SISs. Most have had such facilities and closed them because they found that drug problems increased, not decreased.
After an injection site was opened in Rotterdam in the early 1990s, the municipal council reported a doubling of the number of 15- to 19-year-olds addicted to heroine or cocaine. Over the 1990s, the Dutch Criminal Intelligence Service reported a 25% increase in drug-related gun murders and robberies in neighbourhoods housing one of that country's 50 official methadone clinics or addict 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, panhandling, drug peddling, loud fights and violent crimes.
… drug consumption is the wrong business for government to be in. A government that funds safe havens for injecting illegal drugs on one hand will quickly find it is working against its efforts to reduce drug dealing on the other…
Please write immediately to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and to Minister of Health, Tony Clement and to your MP, requesting that Vancouver's drug injection site permanently shut down and that Canada's drug policy provide only enforcement, prevention and treatment. It is the only effective way of dealing with drug addiction and genuinely helping the individual addicts who need our care and compassion, not encouragement to continue their addiction.
The addresses of the above are as follows:
The Right Honourable Stephen Harper
Office of the Prime Minister
Langevin Building, 80 Wellington Street
Ottawa ON K1A 0A2
Fax: (613) 941-6900
The Honourable Tony Clement
Minister of Health and Minister for the Federal Economic
Development Initiative for Northern Ontario
House of Commons
Ottawa ON K1A 0A6
Fax: (613) 992-5092
Your MP
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A6
Erickson PG., Riley DM., Cheung YW, O'Hare P.A. (Eds), Harm Reduction: A New Direction for Drug Policies and Programs. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997.
British Columbia Provincial Health Officer. Perry Kendall (British Columbia's provincial Health Officer) Responds to INCB's Assertion that Supervised Injection Facilities Are in Breach of International Drug Control Treaties. May 3, 2007
(Supra)
Mangham C. A Critique of Canada's INSITE Injection Site and its Parent Philosophy: Implications and Recommendations for Policy Planning
Journal of Global Drug Policy and Practice, 1, (2), 2007.
Canadian Centre of Substance Abuse. A National Survey of Alcohol and Other Drugs: Prevalence and Related Harms, 2006, Ottawa.
Health Canada, Tobacco Use Monitoring Survey, Ottawa.
United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, Sweden's Successful Drug Policy: A Review of the Evidence, 2006, Geneva ODC
|
