The Tories and Insite

For those not in the know, Insite is a government-sponsored safe injection site in Vancouver's notorious Downtown Eastside, which has long been a haven for drugs, crime, poverty, prostitution and human suffering. Insite was created thanks to the efforts of local NDP MP Libby Davis and modelled on similar European sites. Insite is unique to North America and exists only because it has an exemption from the Criminal Code. The federal Liberals set it up three years ago as an experiment in active, community-level, harm reduction and gave it a three year mandate. The mandate is over this September and the Tories have not said a word about extending its mandate or granting it a permanent exemption...much as been written about the social and health benefits that advocates attribute to Insite but below is an attempt to distill the political nature of the debate over the centre from the Tory perspective...it was written in response to some usenet natterings/discussion...

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For better or worse the Tories object to any government initiative that makes drug addition easier. Despite all the studies that Insite's proponents put forth, they cannot escape this very basic political problem. And this problem is linked to the fact that the government is helping herion addicts remain herion addicts,and in fact teaching them to inject. Is this what is in the best interests of the individual, to prolong their active addiction to an illegal narcotic? And should state funds be used to do so? Would Vancouver's downtown East Side be worse or better off if Insite were converted to a strictly medical clinic with a mandate to assist addicts and promote recovery?

Let me put this into historical perspective for you with a question. Is Insite merely the postmodern equivalent, with all its attendent moral relativism, of a Victorian-era opium den?

Insite provides significant benefits for its community. There is no question about this. It reaches out to people who live and suffer on the margins of society in an entirely unique and beneficial way. But for the Tories it raises important political questions about the nature and appropriateness of this type of intervention for drug users since it helps to prolong addiction.
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(respondent compared liquor outlets for alcoholics to Insite)

Your analogy between alcoholism and heroin addiction is off target. The only way it could be comparable is if the government ran its own serving establishments that catered strictly to alcoholics. See the difference?

Yes the government sells booze but the vast majority of its clients are not alcoholics while Insite caters specifically to heroin, cocaine and other addicts. See the difference?

As it is, government liquor outlets reserve the right to not sell booze to those already drunk. Bars, restaurants, liqueur outlets and individuals are legally responsible for those they sell or serve liquor to. If you go to a party, get smashed, drive drunk and kill someone and your host is legally and civilly responsible. Insite provides actual lessons to addicts on how to shoot up and is not responsible for what addicts do once they leave the premises. Insite does not turn anyone away and advertises for more clients. See the difference?

The government is not aiding and abetting alcoholism in the same way as Insite (see above). One reason is the government has set strict legal limits on what you can consume, where and when and at what age, limits to the level of alcohol in beverages, times and places where it can be sold ect ect. Booze may be legal, but it is also heavily regulated. The government also counters the problems of alcohol abuse with massive advertising campaigns. Insite turns this notion on its head for heroin addiction. Further, state funds are not used to keep alcoholics as alcoholics whereas Insite uses tax money to provide the means for heroin addicts to stay heroin addicts. See the difference?

Your point on prohibition is a non sequitur and is not germane to your argument. Heroin is already an illegal drug so it is already prohibited. Insite required an exemption from the criminal code to operate. Are you arguing that the next logical step is to make heroin legal or that the government should provide be in the business of procuring heroin and selling it to the addict in addition to providing a safe site to inject? If the latter is a public benefit, why not the former? A whole host of social benefit would arise from such a government policy.

By strictly medical I mean that Insite would provide only medical services to addicts, including needle exchange, and not be an injection site. One reason for Insite's success is that it offers services and help directly in community where the problem exists. In other words, Insite's location is a major factor in its success. This fact seems overlooked by its proponents. How do we separate out it's function as a safe injection site and its role as a medical/counselling/referral service in understanding its success?

How is providing addicts with information on how to shoot up and a location to do so promoting a solution to their problem? Access to counselling and pamphlets is secondary to Insite's primary function.

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You're attempting to change the framework of the discussion from whether the government should help an individual remain addicted to heroin by providing a means for 'safe' injection to helping society at large. (The idea of 'safe' injection of heroin is in fact an oxymoron as if injecting heroin could made safe for the individual...clean utensils does not make injecting heroin safe). Your latest response introduces the 'ends justify the means' argument...since Insite helps clean up Vancouver's Downtown Eastend., keeping addicts "out of the public eye", it's worthwhile and we can discount the fact that Insite enables addicts to engage in their addiction, which is the source of the problems. So we help ourselves by keeping heroin addiction an orderly, clean process?

There is a certain amount of defeatism in what Insite is doing. The argument goes, since there will always be addicts, we can best help ourselves and the community by better managing the addiction process. If, as you argue that heroin addiction is but a symptom of a larger social problem, then how does a better managed heroin injection process address the actual cause of the problems? Should we not be focused on causality and not symptoms?

The benefit of any drug addiction policy cannot be measured by what it does for the community. It can only be measured by what it does for the individual addict.

The central questions remain unanswered: should the state and state funds be used to help drug addicts actively pursue their own addictions, in essence, to help continue the harm addiction does to an individual addict? Could Insite successfully accomplish its mission by providing health and social services directly to its community without allowing addicts to inject onsite?
References to 'social benefits' do not answer these question, it only avoids them. This is also why references to the 'medical benefits' of what Insite does will not win the day with the Tories.
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Again, I support what Insite is doing. I am trying to provide some insight into what the Tories are struggling with on this policy. At the end of the day the Tories may/should extend the test phase of Insite for another three years at which point the Tories will either have a majority (lol...fat chance) or it will be a Liberal problem again (more than likely).

But Hippo rarely takes the easy way....the twit.

Finally it should be noted that Libby Davis, NDP MP for Vancouver East, spent 3-5 years pushing this idea and others on the Chrétien government and ran into quite a bit of resistance, not only from the government but from the RCMP. She and others eventually won people over, including the RCMP. It is too Ms Davis' great credit that Insite exists at all and she epitomizes what a good MP should be.

pc