The Hook

The government is under no obligation to provide drug users with a safe place to inject, a lawyer for the Attorney General of Canada argued Monday.

It was the latest shot fired during arguments in B.C.’s top court that has the future of Vancouver's supervised injection site hanging in the balance.

The federal government is arguing that a B.C. Supreme Court judge erred in granting users and staff at Insite a constitutional exemption from elements of possession and trafficking drug laws. That decision, rendered last year, gave the government until June 30 of this year to fix the apparent contradiction.

“Sixty days from now, this province is at risk of not having a trafficking law,” lawyer Robert Frater, acting for the Attorney General of Canada, argued Monday.

Last year's decision, Frater argued, erroneously found federal drug laws had to accommodate the needs of the injection drug users who use Insite.

“The government is under no obligation to provide [drug addicts] with a safer way of breaking the law,” Frater said.

Frater suggested Insite proponents’ arguments for “reasonable accommodation” for Insite users under federal drug laws were in fact the “capitulation of criminal law.”

It would be as if, Frater suggested, the laws against theft had to be adjusted to accommodate kleptomaniacs, or if laws against arson had to accommodate pyromaniacs.

“This judgment is erroneous in every step of the way,” Frater suggested. But lawyer Joseph Arvay, acting for Insite co-managers PHS Community Services Society and two of Insite’s clients, maintained the trial judge was correct in his decision, which in effect gave Insite the legal right to operate despite what the federal government said.

“This law stands between seriously ill people and the health care services they need,” Arvay said.

“Without Insite,” he suggested, “they’re in the alleys. There is a very, very high risk that they will inject using unclean needles and unclean water.

“… There’s a serious risk [they] will acquire HIV or [Hepatitis C] and pass it on.”

Upholding the elements of Canada’s drug laws struck down by the B.C. Supreme Court last year would prohibit addicts from using Insite and expose them to risk, Arvay said.

“It is the law that … creates the risk of death or illness,” Arvay suggested. “It’s the law that stands between the addict and health care.” In his decision last year, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Ian Pitfield compared the treatment of Insite injection drug users to how society treats smokers or alcoholics.

“Society neither condemns the individual who chose to drink or smoke to excess, nor deprives that individual of a range of health care services,” Pitfield wrote.

“I cannot see any rational or logical reason why the approach should be different when dealing with the addiction to narcotics.”

Irwin Loy reports for Vancouver's 24 Hours.