Last week, however, Vancouver opened its first “safe injection site.” Addicts bring their drug of choice, purchased somewhere on the streets around the “safe site.”
They are provided with clean needles and enter a small booth to shoot up. A nurse supposedly supervises the place. After shooting up, addicts spend a little time in a “chill-out room” before going back out into the neighbourhood.
I tried to explain the concept to some West End Winnipeg youth. They were understandably confused. "Let me get this straight. Government is actually helping people do something illegal and unhealthy? Ain't that a rush! Any other laws they're canceling?”
Cops will indeed be asked to turn a blind eye to the addicts bringing illegal drugs into the site and focus instead on the dealers of illegal drugs.
Nurses will turn a watchful eye to addicts as they inject illegal narcotics without prescriptions, with unidentified impurities and acknowledged power to destroy lives.
One of my addict friends commented, “I would have been much less likely to quit and even quicker to get hooked if I had that kind of protection from the law and accidents when I was using.”
For him, facing the risks actually helped him decide to quit. Abating the risk would have made it easier to continue. It's the medical and behavioral equivalent of an economic principle - you get more of whatever you subsidize.
Making something dangerous appear safer will encourage even more people to try it. But don't be fooled. It's an extremely thin veneer of safety.
There is no increased safety at the point of production. There is no increased safety where dealers and middlemen cut the product, introducing a variety of contaminants and impurities.
There is no increased safety to the addict - or the public at large - during the time the addict begs, borrows or steals the money for their fix.
There is no increased safety at the point of sale. If anything, targeting the dealers will drive the transaction deeper into dark back lanes and drug dens.
There is no increased safety to vulnerable addicts after leaving the “safe injection” site.
There is no increased safety in the housing, sleeping or dietary situation of the junkie.
Please don’t believe that strung out addicts will always take the time to make it to the safe injection site and wait their turn to have their arm swabbed with alcohol and use a fresh needle.
And remember that addicts with an outstanding debt to a dealer or an outstanding criminal warrant don’t exactly want to be predictable prey.
Even if addicts use the “safe site” 55% of the time, there's still 45% exposure to HIV, Hepatitis C and a multitude of other risks when they can't wait to get there.
In this pop philosophy of harm-reduction, the hype exceeds the reality. It’s a thinly veiled devolution of treatment and enforcement. It’s more about saving money on a pretense of prevention than it is about spending money to truly help addicts quit. It's less about action than inaction. And it's symptomatic of an "if you can't beat them, join them" mentality.
After airing the Vancouver story, a local talk show host asked if I felt we needed a safe injection site here. I highlighted my concerns and then suggested that there are many more sniffers than needle users in our neighbourhood.
I wondered what would happen if we utilized the same flawed logic to establish safe sniff houses.
Sniffers would come into a nice clean building. A nurse could provide them with a clean, nicely folded rag. Sniffers could bring their own solvent. Or maybe government could reduce even more public harm and criminal profit by dispensing the solvent themselves! Have you heard that one before?
Then, nurses or public health workers could pour a reasonable dose of paint thinner on the clean rag and lovingly administer the rag to the face in a way that allows for an occasional gasp of oxygen.
They could ensure nobody chokes on their rag. And after watching sniffers fry a multitude of brain cells, the caring medical personnel could properly dispose of the rags in fireproof containers.
Would that qualify as “harm reduction?” I figure that activists must weigh the harm reduced against the harms maintained or advanced.
Enabling, even while disguised as compassion, is the ultimate in condescension and self-serving neglect.
Rev. Harry Lehotsky
514 Maryland Street
Winnipeg, Mb R3G 1M5
(204) 775-4929
lehotsky@escape.ca