We could argue for years

We could argue for years about all this, but nothing can gainsay the fact that all Harper/Clement are doing is kow-towing to the Yank's "War on Drugs".

That policy is strictly Prohibition, and it is not designed in any way to countenance other's notions of harm-reduction. Thus, appeals on behalf of Science, common sense - or even concern for one's fellow man - all become irrelevant.

Also irrelevant is the simple observation that in every country in which this "War" has been waged, it has turned out to be a failure - most particularly in its country of origin, the US, where it has been a collossal failure.

The writer of the piece noted that Clement's drug policies are "Science - Trumped by Ideology". So, what's new ?

Thanks for that, Zalm. I

Thanks for that, Zalm. I couldn't agree more. It's troubling how the "harm reduction" agenda has totally displaced the other components of the four pillar strategy: treatment, prevention, and enforcement....these are essential components without which "harm reduction" is nothing more than an ideologically-loaded euphemism, a platitude of the liberal-left.

I'm a tepid supporter of the "safe" injection site (another euphemism), but it's galling how anyone who breathes a critical word is accused of waging "Bush's Drug War". Who is playing ideology? There's such thing as legitimate constructive criticism of where "harm reduction" is taking us. Vancouver has a *massive* profit-driven drug problem, and "harm reduction" has to be for the whole community, not just for the clients of the drug trade and drug services. Science is unable to quantify and qualify that. Drug policy must ultimately serve and promote the overall well-being of the non-using majority. Humanitarian efforts can certainly be part of that, but we're losing sight of the non-user. The non-user, non-client, non-patient must be placed at the centre of drug policy.

Ideology/Evidence

There in a nutshell is the Harper government, and the Bush government too. It applies not only to their health policy, but to the entire ideology of the laissez-faire economy. The god-like Market knows best, and evidence that it doesn't only shows that the evidence must be wrong, not the belief. The Conservatives really are the "mini-Me" version of the catastrophic government south of the border.

Never took any drugs in my

Never took any drugs in my life, but having had a shop on Powell St. for 8 years, have seen enough of that suicidal mess, had enough break ins, even 30-40 years ago.

There's no excuse for drug addiction, it is a form of suicide people get into voluntarily, as the disgusting effects have been known for over a half century.

But also having had first hand experience with all the crazy ideologies burped up by the 20th century, I have to wonder, what really is the difference between being addicted to drugs, and/or screwball ideologies and religions ?

What we have here is a debate between two forms of addiction, both of them with deadly consequences to the practitioners and society at large.

Ed Deak.

Do a Cost Benefit Analysis Mr. Clement

Overall does anyone really consider going back to the old paradigm as being less onerous for our health care system? Every HIV and HEP C client is treated courtesy of the taxpayer; every clear eyed Conservative will have to wait their turn in the Emergency Ward as another overdose case is treated at St. Pauls before you. And this is just one argument ...

Efficiency in the marketplace is a tenet of Tory ideology. The only other efficient method of attenuating the impact of illegal drug users is to let them die before they get into the hospital system.

But of course no civilized society would tolerate this approach, would they?

?

Nightbloom wrote:

What exactly is "harm reduction" a euphemism for? What ideology is it a part of (considering that both the right-of-centre Philip Owen, and the left-of-centre Larry Campbell, promoted it)? It is not the "liberal-left" who is ignoring the need for more treatment centres. They are not in power at any level of government right now. The responsibility lies with those who have the power to do something about it -- the federal Conservatives, the provincial Liberals, and the NPA.

The fellow who mentioned the

The fellow who mentioned the shortage of Detox beds has it right. There needs to be more, but who is setting them up? Nobody as far as we can tell. But the Insite program keeps people alive even as they wait for opportunities to get away from the drug issue. maybe some folks really like the idea of being a addict and won't change even if helped. But in my view, a lot do attempt to levae and have many obsticles in their path. People talk about"It's their fault, nobody forces them to be addicted. Let them die" Is that the words of a caring society. Keep the place running and be glad we have professionals who will staff the place. The next one in the door could be your parent, son, daughter or spouse.

The market

If market ideology were to prevail in this realm, things would look very different. Illicit drugs would be available for sale as are alcohol and tobacco. Corporations would earn huge profits selling marijuana, cocaine and heroin. The supply would be more uniform, the products of higher quality, and sales and promotion regulated by government. People would still get addicted and some of them would die, and just as now, other people would get wealthy from it. But crime might decrease, and it would all be much more transparent.

I don't know if that's necessarily the best solution, but why aren't the free-market ideologues discussing it? I wish someone would ask Mr. Clement that question.

"Harm reduction" is a

"Harm reduction" is a euphemism with a spin like you wouldn't believe. It's not a medical or scientific term, nor is it actually descriptive of anything. Humanitarian treatment of heroine addicts is one thing, but the ideologues are tossing in all sorts of notions under their "harm reduction" rubric.

For example, Ottawa City Council is being derided by "harm reduction" activists as a bunch of "murderers" for voting to scrap the Crack Pipe Program in favour of a new treatment centre in the downtown core. The AIDS Committee of Ottawa has continued dispensing remaining stock of the tax-funded pipes. The argument is that the free pipes prevent HIV transmission (through the sharing of sharing cracked & damaged pipes). The estimated percentage of transmissions via this vector is marginal (and questionable) and the whole rationale has a huge hole in it. The stock of pipes being distributed are hardly immune to becoming cracked & damage through useage & sharing. In fact, it's inevitable. So where exactly is the "harm reduction" taking place...? Where should the public invest, and where should proponents of humanitarian approaches be investing their credibility?

I also note that the activists are taking the usual relativist line which suggests street-drug addiction is part of a socity-wide continuum which includes the morning expresso or the evening glass of merlot. It's the exact same rationale I used to hear from the A-list club dealers in the party circuit. Incidentally, "harm reduction" is also the euphemism now being bandied about by those who advocate selective "barebacking" as a viable community-wide HIV prevention method in urban gay communities (most notably by Andrew Sullivan).

So if you want to protect the integrity of "harm reduction" I think people need to be a bit more descriminating in their use of the euphemism. It's starting to set off semantic trip-wires and warning bells which it's more well-intentioned proponents never intended.

I didn't wrap up my point

I didn't wrap up my point very well above, Booker. For me, the bottom line is that we need a rational, controlled, humanitarian approach to the most desperate cases. A form of triage. I'm wary of lotusland ideologues who want to exploit "harm reduction" as a back door to legalization.

An excellent article

On one hand, stories like like this one reveal how hard it is for the voter to decide what parties/people should govern. On one hand, we've got business first, family values first, right to life first and big spending on defence first. On the other hand, we've got corporations regulated and properly taxed, a society that is allowed to choose its own social standards free of government control, morality that is free of government control/ideology, and frugal defence spending, arming peace keepers with presence alone... and some will say that presence is quite enough... because it is. Point is, voters can't cherry pick. Voters can only vote for one group of issue stances or the other.

And in this country, dwarfed by U.S. politics whether we know it or not, we've got the Republican plant Stephen Harper, heavily supported by the National Citizens Coalition, a large group of U.S. born multinationals who, well, just want to own us.

There's an expression in the U.S. that paints a certain picture. "There is the american and then there is the "Republican" american. I don't believe its all that hard to see just what kind of party and country Stephen Harper truly serves. If you like Republican ideology/values/PR spin, vote for Stephen Harper.

Legalization

I too worry about some of the people who push for legalization, particularly when they are advocating for legalization of a narcotic they themselves are dependent upon. Nevertheless, the idea of "harm reduction" in the context of the commentary in Open Medicine is not one laden with ideology. Conservatives need to get over the association of harm reduction with some sort of Sixties drug permissiveness. It's about trying to find new ways of helping addicts stay alive and recover, and the evidence clearly shows that Insite has helped in that regard. If Clement shuts it down, he'd better have some evidence to back up the decision.

nightbloom, i note that in

nightbloom, i note that in your effort to dismiss harm reduction, you carefully skirt around the needle exchange strategy to ridicule other questionable strategies. is that because you know needle exchanges work, but that fact doesn't contribute to your point?

you can break this issue down to its elements: sharing needles spreads disease. needle exchanges prevent needle sharing.

lets not forget that addicts are all around us and are often invisible in society. addicts paw the oranges in your grocery store and use the washrooms in your local gas station. wouldn't you prefer that those people have access to clean needles and the means to limit the spread of HIV? even the most hopeless addict would prefer not to get HIV or hepatitis. nobody wants to kill their friends or family members. these aren't monsters, after all, they're human beings.

my best friend for years was a hard-core addict. one day, through sheer force of will, he made the decision to get clean, go to university, get his degree and become a teacher. he succeeded but if he had not had the support (or failing that, the watchfulness and tolerance) of his friends and family - not to mention welfare - during the time that he did not have the strength to change course, he would have been killed or imprisoned.

opportunities for disadvantaged classes do not create themselves. they are held open by the rest of us so that when one is ready, if they ever are, they can make the leap.

The reasons to have Insight is pseudo science

I think the jury is still out on this one and increasing amounts of evidence does actually point to the damage to the non drug using community ie decent honest working taxpayers.

For example, if insight is saving lives or at least deferring deaths, then there is one question I would like answered:
How many crimes have been committed by people who would otherwise have OD'd and died but went to Insight and lived and enabled them to committ more crimes to support their habit?

Until this question can be answered, I think we should close insight and "crack" down on drug use by arresting and jailing offendors.

Insight is the psuedo science here. The adverse effect of allowing a shooting gallery like Insight to operate is it actually makes the downside of drug addiction less hazardous than before, thus encouraging drug use and experimentation. Not to mention making drug use more socially acceptable and calling it a disease instead of a choice, which it is.

We need to close insight ASAP to make drug use have a downside that is ten feet under.

Nice flattax

"How many crimes have been committed by people who would otherwise have OD'd and died but went to Insight and lived and enabled them to committ more crimes to support their habit?" [says flattax - this browser won't accept html tages - but I want to make it clear these are his offensive words]

You seem to be getting more and more offensive as time goes on. How do you manage it.

oceanda - As I said, I

oceanda - As I said, I support Insite in principle...and I support responsible needle exchange programs and other "harm reduction" measures which hold up under critical and rational scrutiny (for example, condom distribution & 'clean' tattoo services in male prisons).

Which is why I am concerned that some are promoting perverse notions of "harm reduction" for the sake of another agenda entirely.....This places the whole concept at risk, and only tests the public's overall patience and tolerance for these kinds of taxpayer-funded attempts the minimize the harm associated with some behaviours.

And notwithstanding the success of such programs, we must remember that they will never be anything more than stop-gap measures to stem the worse symptoms of far deeper problems. We're still contributing to an addict's long-term deterioration, irrespective of whether that deterioration was inevitable or not. Harm reduction is only one small part of larger equation, and some of its proponents (like those peddling the crack pipes in Ottawa) have totally lost their perspective on the issue.

Exploiting "Harm Reduction"

Here's an example of how harm reduction is becoming politicized and ideologized by the liberal-left at the expense of prevention. How manipulative and perverse that harm reduction is being explicity mined by ideologues for its potential to revive an activist machinery that is largely 'standing down' after it has achieved most or all of its objectives with the passage of Bill C-38 (gay marriage)...

Embracing harm reduction could revitalize queer politics
http://www.xtra.ca/public/viewstory.aspx?AFF_TYPE=2&STORY_ID=3498&PUB_TEMPLATE_ID=4

Note that the disingenuous relativization of drug use starts with the very first sentence, and that harm reduction is explictly elevated above prevention and treatment (bolded text). It's totally irresponsible, and grossly misrepresents what the Four Pillars were supposed to be about:

Left, right not the question

It's sad to see so many people jumping on their respective political bandwagons for the "answers" to every question that comes up on The Tyee. The question for me is, do I want to live in a society where those down on their luck are ignored? My answer is clear: No, I don't.
That means offering help to, among many others, drug users on the downtown eastside. This is a basic principle for most religions on earth, but it's a principle widely ignored when the left/right wrangling starts.
I feel for the poor and the unfortunate because they are my kin, and because in different circumstances I might easily be there on the streets beside them. It is our duty to offer our best efforts at helping everybody who needs help. All this arguing about ideology and money is not getting the job done.

A very simple solution

Give the addicts their drugs so they won`t have to steal for them. Supply the drugs the needle and a safe place to shoot up. This would solve most of the social ills involved with addiction and would mostly likely lead to a better oppurtunity for these people to try and get off the drugs.
But more important I think alot of this is about the mafia corporate controlled government doing the watch my left hand while jerking our guts out with the right.
How come there isn`t as much time devoted to getting the war criminals in Ottawa thrown in prison where they belong or maybe that so called RCMP judge jury and executioner of that young man in Houston. I thought there wasn`t a death penalty in Canada but apparently in Houston there is for drinking a beer in public. Where is the outrage where is the justice apparently it is no more in this Police State called Canada

as for sdgreen

As the song says "It's all been tried before." ...and failed.

If you care to take the time and do a little reading, I think I can disabuse you of your conviction that any of your suggestions, alone or in combination, will achieve anything positive and in fact with guarantee the absolute opposite.

Here you go, it's quite long, but all of the book is available online:

http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/agency/prologue.htm

Quote:That means offering

Sure. But what form should that help assume?

Everyone's favourite absolutist, flattax...

...has been joined in ignorance by sdgreen. Jail 'em all, eh?

- Admiral Horatio Nelson suffered from an opium addiction throughout his later years in the navy

- Lord Liverpool, British prime minister of ether addiction

- Clive of India - another one who suffered from opium addiction

- Sigmund Freud and his cocaine habit

- Czar Nicholas II spent the last two years of his reign on a cocktail of drugs. He took cocaine (for his colds), opium and morphine for his stomach complaints and obtained hallucinogens from a herbalist. Visitors often commented on his gaunt appearance, dull eyes and his vacant smile.

- Sir Winston Churchill was known for his large appetite for chemical stimulants given to him by his personal physician Lord Moran. In the 1950s he became totally dependent on barbiturates - even more so after his stroke in 1953, often mixing them with copious amounts of alcohol.

- Hermann Goering spent a large part of World War II in a narcotic stupor. In 1925 the Swedish authorities declared Goering a dangerous drug addict and locked him in an asylum where he attacked a nurse after she refused to give him morphine. By 1937 he was hooked on Codein. When he was captured in 1945 he was taking roughly 100 tablets a day. It is suspected that he also took cocaine.

Nice to see some still favour the simple solution. Makes the rest of us look like absolute geniuses, which we certainly aren't, or we'd be able to come up with proper solutions on our own.

One size does NOT fit all

There are many needs for recovering drug addicts. Housing, jobs, secure and structured living arrangments, socialization, and health maintenance only begins to scratch the surface of the list.

Safe injection is one of those needs, I'm sure, but it belongs somewhere around #5 or 6 or maybe even lower on the above list. Not #1, where it has been put by some genuinely misinformed supporters above.

Not even Julio Montaner says this is the first or most immediate need - it's merely the simplest and cheapest one to address. That's why it's been implemented first.

Very few are addressing post-detox living. That's why my church is considering joining with five others to set up a house in Vancouver (location TBA - shades of Fraser St. detox!) to provide structured living for former addicts to stay clean for a one year stay; learn to care for themselves and their health; learn to get up in the morning and be productive in some way; learn alternative coping and anger management strategies; and learn how to express themselves. Only after this will they be introduced to the possibility of getting a job.

But it's hideously expensive, and we haven't even gotten the house set up yet (meaning Planning, Engineering and Legal haven't had their way with the society yet, never mind the neighbours). That's probably why neither Vancouver Coastal nor the City nor the Province is interested in doing it. Yet without this programme of post-detox living, former addicts are virtually doomed to repeat the cycle of addiction and detox until they finally catch the lucky break that gets them out of the DTES and away from their "friends".

Or die. It's not as simple an answer as some would have it. It's just expensive.

That said, we've spent $2 milion a year on sillier things, so, awaiting more positive options, I'm as tepid as nightbloom and say leave it open for now. Harper will tire of the smell of Bush's ass eventually.

Insite does serve non-users......

Nightbloom said above that:

Insite could very likely lead to more users seeking treatment, if there were treatment options out there to be found. A reduction in addicts, thanks to treatment, of course benefits everyone, not just addicts - but treatment facilities are much too scarce.

But non-users still benefit from any reduction in the spread of disease. Any spread of HIV, Hep C and other diseases that increases the level of infection in society as a whole, increases everyone's chance to be exposed to the disease. Just because one individual (or vector) became infected due to using needles, doesn't mean needles are the only (though a likely) way he/she could contribute to the infection of someone else.

Consider the clinic in Calgary where patients are currently having to be tested for HIV, Hep C etc. because their surgical tool sterilizer wasn't working properly for the last 6-7 months. Perhaps some junkie had a mole removed and the next person to have an incision made with the non-sterile...........you can understand where this could lead.

Use of dirty needles is virtually a non-factor in Africa where HIV/AIDS is epidemic, especially among heterosexual women.

kootcoot - ...which is why

kootcoot - ...which is why (to reiterate) I remainly supportive of Insite for the time being, but skeptical of other experiments that are being tossed under the "harm reduction" rubric (like the examples I mentioned: Ottawa's crack pipe program; promotion of sero-sorting as a community hiv prevention method for gay men, etc.).

Nightbloom

I would hope that you would bring up the topic of insufficient detox beds and recovery facilities with the politicians you, presumably, are ideologically supportive of: the Conservatives, the provincial Liberals, and the NPA. They are in a position to do something about it, and rail as you might against the "liberal left", it won't solve any of our problems. Demand results from those in office!

Why No Skepticism re: Prohibition?

Nightbloom you say (and this is similar to many other critics of anything progressive)

Don't people remember how successful Prohibition proved to be when used to deal with alcohol in the early 20th Century US? Methinks there is too much money involved for too many interests in the current and apparently eternal "War on Drugs" for any constructive change in approach to be likely.

The Unravelling...

Wrote Fait Lux above, in his excellent, ever inimitable style. :-) (Who said age and experience doesn't make one smarter?)

So many drugs, so many screwball ideologies and religions (which are really ideologies themselves.)

But it's complicated. For example, even if one doesn't subscribe to an official "ideology", there is still a tendency for the rest of us to create our own, from the rudimentary, to the carefully thought out and crafted.

All constantly being tested in the laboratory of life, often over very long periods of time, in the context of a single person's life at least. Which in the context of overall "time" can still be but the blink of an eye.

And we are living through a time right now ourselves, I suspect, wherein all these drug, ideology and religious "ideology" choices are but attempts to deal with, theorize about and address a great unravelling going on in the human social order. (Evident along a broad reality front-, from the environment to the economy and intra-human, male-female, and "class relations.")

And within this great unravelling going on in the social and economic order, all the drugs (from alcohol to heroin), ideologies and religions, including the (very often) religion of science are being tested for their coping and solution adequacy. Not as yet anyway, has any of them clearly emerged as the best solution or coping mechanism however, I don't think.

There is clearly need within the prevailing human psyche and social reality, for further unravelling, and testing of all the options. It seems to me. With no guarantees of success, or that we will respond and act quickly enough.

We may well already be earmarked for extinction, like the dinosaurs and many other species before us, who had their time as well, and some other insignificant creature currently living in the shadows of our underbrush due, eventually, to replace us and have its time in the historical sun.

So many drug and ideological (including religious) choices to be played out-, whilst Rome burns. :-D lol

Koot-coot - "Prohibition" is

Koot-coot - "Prohibition" is a red herring here. The question is how best to help people. "Harm reduction" has become a misnomer when it's used as a cover for policies and practices that are deeply harmful to the broader community. Insite seems to meet the rational test of "harm reduction" (barely) which is why I think it needs to be tolerated by mainstream society for a little while longer (until we can iron our the proofs), but the other examples I decry (free crack pipes and sero-sorting) do not meet that test, and yet they are nevertheless being pushed by hard core liberal-left activist ideologues (as evidenced by the propagandistic efforts I links, above).

For the sake of genuine 'Harm Reduction', the legalization/prohibition debate needs to be kept separate.

Red Herring - I think not!

When prohibition is the main approach to the "drug problem" in North America, I hardly think it can be called a red herring. The main weapon in the "War on Drugs" is the legal approach, or making it illegal and thus using arrest, imprisonment and general interdiction as the "solution" to the problem.

Little consideration of the medical nature of the problem is found, with "harm reduction" being one of the few. Of course then supposedly "fair minded" folks like yourself subject this approach to all kinds of scrutiny and skepticism that for some reason the whole lock 'em up or let 'em die approach is never subjected to.

Canada is way ahead of the US in its attitudes to the "drug problem" or at least it was until Stephen Harper was allowed to pretend to be Prime Minister. Also the US itself is the biggest impediment to the creation of a sane drug policy in Canada.

The current approach with its emphasis on enforcement, arrest, imprisonment and marginalization only makes the drug market more lucrative and I'm sorry to say many of the people who profit the most are the most in favor of the current status quo. Unfortunately many of these same people are also in positions to effectively resist progressive change.

The Status Quo can hardly be called a Red Herring!!!

The "war on drugs" is hardly

The "war on drugs" is hardly the approach being adopted in Canada, and especially not in the Lower Mainland, where citizens literally must tip-toe around the drug dealers in their neighbourhoods. Vancouverites always make me laugh when they go off on their "war on drugs" rant just because they can't get their dope, crack and crystal meth at the supermarket yet. Come off it. Since when are drug laws in Vancouver actually enforced? I live in a total non-enforcement bubble where drug dealers are treated like community celebrities and seem to have more job security than the local CUPE folks, given that I've been seeing the same faces dealing for nearly the last decade. You call that excessive law enforcement? Might as well give them BC medical-dental coverage too.

Gimme a break. Consumers haven't been targeted, and when they are it's because they were being totally flagrant & stupid about it. Stop your baby-talk. Humanitarianism does not require the kind of open-season indulgence some ideologues are pushing.

Wait a sec - before this

Wait a sec - before this goes too far out on the irresolvable "war on drugs" bender, let me agree with a couple things you said (kootcoot & booker)...

I agree that we need to put our money where our mouth is when it comes to ready, accessible and local treatment opportunities. It's a great injustice that the only people who can get into treatment that actually works (when they need it) are those who can fork out $10K up front (either they or their families) and another $10K for the extra six weeks. The only really successful treatment programs seem to be the really expensive ones, and they're only for the upper-middle, upper, and leisure classes, it seems.

And I agree that the U.S.-style approach to drugs has been a failure, and has created a parallel economy on a massive scale, with some very corrosive society-wide results. I'm not ready for legalization of hard drugs though (the pharmaceutical compounds and white powders...laws governing non-enhanced organics could use an overhaul I suppose)...for a number of reasons, not least because none of the regulatory models put forward are realistic or feasible. You'd still end up with a black market and all the nastiness that comes with it.

But getting back to the topic at hand: Insite should be allowed to run its course. Put it through the paces, and look at the data when enough has been gathered (data on the users themselves and on the broader community around them).

c'mon nightbloom

ok i wont get into that argument that neither of us wants to get into about decriminilization being a good or bad thing. (it's good) but no drug war up here? it's thankfully not as harsh as it has been / could be, i'll agree. it's not so common to loose your freedom and go to prison for having a joint on you anymore. but being proved a "drug abuser" (ie actual drugs on you, paraphenelia, positive drug test) can still lead to a lot of harsh penalties like loosing your:
-kids
-job
-driver's license
-etc

and that's without being intoxicated and messing up in any way (which should rightly be punished). that's from just having someone find out that you've probably used drugs in the recent past.

we may not be enthusiastically fighting the drug war anymore, thankfully, but the drug war culture still pervades our society. please don't minimize the harm that the drug war causes people and make like the whole country is one big happy opium den with the authorities dropping off a bunch of munchies here and there.

I see your point: it's still

I see your point: it's still on the books, therefore the authorities still have the authority to use it at their discretion, even if they choose not to. Even though open drug use in Vancouver is tolerated to an absurd extend, the casual user is potentially susceptible to consequences out of the blue, which may not seem fair given the new norms we've allowed. But let's also not pretend that all the harm associated with hard-core drug use is just because of the "drug war". It can ruin anyone's life, no matter who you are, and irrespective of what the police in your particular jurisdiction are up to, and regardless of how 'clean' the drug is. So I won't be utopian about "prohibition" if you agree not to be utopian about legalization. Either way, there's gonna be a cost. If it really is all about "informed decision-making", then we have to be honest with ourselves about those costs.

Not Necessarily So

Nightbloom, thank you for noticing that we probably agree more than we disagree. But even though the Drug War isn't elevated to the same level of absurdity here as in the US, as mikev points out the law can still be less than constructive. Of course with the Harper government approach to crime, more punishment, more jails etc. is the preferred answer to all problems. The American way is the right way to the "new" government of Canada.

I feel it is necessary to inform you that if purity of the drugs in not an issue (like access to pharmaceutical grade) and money also is not a problem so the user doesn't have to resort to crime to buy drugs - many people use even hard drugs like heroin and/or morphine especially, for extremely long periods, decades with little or no ill effects and still lead productive lives.

Many medical professionals with the means and access to good drugs and the ability to also have a healthy diet etc. manage a habit for decades without their colleagues even knowing. As far as I know, William S. Burroughs is still alive after fifty years or more of opiate use. But then he always had the inheritance of the Burroughs Business Machine family fortune to buy drugs, travel and food - oh yeah, and he did publish a book or two!

The more stimulant drugs like cocaine and methadrine are more debilitating because they give the user a sense of omnipotence and the ability to carry on without rest or food for days on end, leading to burn out in a matter of time most often. Yet for over 70 years now various military organizations, including American ones have dispensed stimulant drugs to pilots, tank drivers and others who needed to stay awake and alert for extended periods of duty in war and peace.

In the case of prohibition of booze, once prohibition ended, alcohol still caused problems and does to this day in terms of health damage, violence and the carnage caused by drunk driving. However, during prohibition all those problems existed with the addition of the gang violence and over-all corrosive effects of Capone et. al. on society as a whole.

mikev put it very well with:

Quote:I feel it is necessary

Ah - so given an unlimited supply of 'good' drugs and an equally unlimited supply of money...

Let's not blow smoke in each other's faces over our own favourite utopian fantasies. We both know that economics (the science of scarcity) would still prevail in a legalized drug trade, and that a black market in knock-offs, cheap fixes and retrograde substances would still be a systemic reality, even under the most utopian regulatory framework.

I'm extremely skeptical of this. Anecdotes of famous artists, self-sufficient bohemians and other members of the leisure class notwithstanding, I doubt the picture of long-term narcotic addiction fis as rosey as you paint for the vast majority of its victims. Substance addiction is - in and of itself - a pathology - the medical profession is in agreement on this. Aren't you now jettisoning the advice of the very medical authorities people have been using to justify the 'harm reduction' endeavour to begin with? We also have to look at the broader effect on their lives and the people around them, to accurately gauge the extent of the damage inflicted by their addictions and the lengths they go to in order to satisfy them. Can a heroine or amphetamine addict really give the best to their children, their families, their jobs, their communities? What are the collateral effects of long-term addiction? Can we honestly hold that up as a valid "lifestyle choice" as you seem to be suggesting?

I'm not recommending it

I'm not recommending a career of drug addiction, altho it would probably be better and healthier than say underground coal mining or working above the pots in a lead smelter.

An addiction to anything is a pain in the ass, be it tobacco, heroin or the X-box. I am merely pointing out that it is demonized beyond all sense of proportion, as yet another part of the drug war.

Cars kill thousands annually, yet no one suggests banning them. Of course more people die of food borne toxins in the US annually than from terrorism ever, total - yet it is the "War on Terror" that gets the attention.

Speaking of Drug Wars, it's quite the record year again for poppies in Afghanistan, and they've now moved into value added, in that they are processing most of the heroin in country now, rather than shipping opium to France. While BC ships raw logs, the Afghan narco lords ship value added heroin. NATO is certainly doing a good job of protecting the interests of the Afghan drug lords.

The issue in the article above is simply that the government is ideologically opposed to the safe injection site, yet try to pretend they are waiting for some scientific question to be resolved. Call Bull Waste where it lies.........Tony Clement is not a scientist and I wouldn't be surprised if he also thought the world was only 6000 years old and evolution was just a highly speculative theory.

Utopian???

I just happened to hear an interview tonight with an official in the Indian Government. India produces a lot of morphine and codeine - from poppies, just like the ones the Americans say they want to destroy in Afghanistan. The morphine tablets India produces - which the West will not permit them to sell in North America or Europe retail for 15c per tablet. The same tablets are sold by the major pharmaceutical companies in the West for about $15. each.

If you don't think that some kind of legalized program around drugs supplied to addicts for .15 per tablet could be arranged to everyone's benefit thereby cutting out both big pharma and organized crime, then I don't know what you're smoking nightbloom.

The solution is available - providing Afghan and Indian farmers at the same time with an opportunity to sell their opium production for hard cash into the bargain.

Time to stop playing silly buggers for a lot of phony ideological reasons and begin to actually address the problem of addiction, don't you think? Might not be a valid lifestyle choice for you or me, but it’d be a damn sight better than the life the 3 – 4 thousand addicts in Vancouver are living now.

My Last Word!

Some people use drugs.

Other people are used by drugs.

Almost anything, even really good things, generally become bad in excess - balance and moderation are to be highly recommended.

it ain`t the heroin what kills ya

its the gettin` it.

Waitaminnnit!

Mikev and nightbloom...

....are you saying that if we open up more detox beds, that enforcement will get more vicious? That enforcement now is so lax in part because there is no place to put addicts except overnight jail?

And koot, we let cops and race car drivers speed. We let test pilots go up in planes that aren't certified. We test uncertified life-saving drugs on people. All these are done with an acknowledged judgement of the risks involved.

Where's the judgement in an open drug market, even if the products are government-regulated? Addiction is the famous judgement-remover. Avoiding the consequences of a prohibition problem seems to me to be a particularly North American problem not faced by any other society in the world, where considerably more attention is paid to obligations than freedoms.

Granted, we have the right to run our society how we see fit. But we ought not complain when it doesn't drive down the road straight.

Sorry, I 've had a snootful of wine. I may be a bit slower than usual.

NightBloom

Banning any drug (prohibition) is pure ideology, and only serves to allow politicians, as well as the society at large to avoid addressing the reason drug-taking is so epidemic. Go after the root cause, because so-called "Drug policy" is pure bandaid, and it's only real function is to ensure the cost of said banned (or restricted) substances remains artifically high.

"Politics is a form of high entertainment and low comedy"
- Richard Condon

He excelled at satirizing politics, most notably American-style politics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Condon

Quote:Banning any drug

Nonsense. Drugs of all sorts are tested, regulated and banned for a wide variety of sound and justifiable reasons. Your statement is pure ideology. Remember thalydomide.

Just because we opt for humanitarian approaches to hard-luck cases doesn't mean "open season" is a viable option. In the end, it's the little guy (and those around him) who's gonna be stuck with the problem and the repercussions, while Big Dealer or Big Pharma runs off with his money.

A glass of wine...

Alcohol is my drug of choice as well, Zalm. Yet on the scale of the problem, it probably probably causes way more societal and family problems that heroin. It's advantage is, of course, that it is legal and regulated, and easier to stay out of the slammer on and lose one's job over.

And being regulated, at least, we get good quality shitt without the life destroying exorbitant price cost that unofficial crime attaches to... say heroin.

Like I say, in the great human societal unravelling currently going on, there is a commensurate and growing need, it seems, at least on occasion, to be numbed to the in place, not infrequently dehumanizing realities of our lives-, as mere cogs in the wheels of the ruling class system.

Now, for that whiskey. :-)

So lets bring in those .15 tabs

From India and get busy. I knew there had to be at least ONE example where global trade could actually benefit both sides of an equation.

Most addicts, given a real opportunity to stop dancing will at least try and even if they don't succeed it has to be better than picking up their carcasses form the alleys which is what happened before Insite opened. I have a friend (UBC medicine 2001) who attended at as many as 4 overdoses in one weekend night shift on the Hastings St ambulance dispatch. Clearly the safe shoot up zone can only succeed if there is some other methodology in place.

That's the trouble with ideologues - especially right wing ones:
First of all they're not persuaded by evidence and;

They really are most comfortable when they're telling everyone else HOW to live.

Like fundamentalist preachers, the truth is almost always the polar opposite of what they say. This garbage about waiting for more studies is nonsense. Harper and Clement should be notified by phone every time an addict overdoses in this country – any time of the day or night.

Insite should be saved.

Insite should be saved. Like you, Gwest, I have a friend in the medical profession who confronted the daily reality of DTES overdoses. He did his internship in the VGH morgue, and the number of O.D.s was just shocking. Lots of suicides in Vancouver too (bridge & skytrain jumpers). Just a whole lot of misery in that city that is totally invisible to the luxury condo-dwellers and the folks who attend the downtown conferences of the Vancouver Board of Trade.

'Best' Place on earth????

I heard Matthew Good being interviewed recently...he said more or less the same thing - that a place which had once been more than a picture postcard of sea and mountains - now is a hard, cold and increasingly awful place to live and, often, die.

The Board of Trade and the Economist, like Condé Nast, is often better at describing what 'was' or what might have been than reflecting what actually 'is'.

Vancouver is dining out on its past and eating its young...