Insite: Foundational Drug Addiction Resource?

The Supreme Court of Canada seems to have the final authority on a good many controversial issues. In the shadowy area between crime, health and society, there are repercussions to society that result from ill-thought-out interventions, on occasion.

In the latest decision brought down by the Court, legitimization is given to 'safe-injection sites', as a valid, useful and successful methodology for harm reduction in attempting to control the after-effects of serious drug use. Drug addicts are invited to attend the clinic setting in places like Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, where Insite has become an institution, respected for its non-judgemental, hands-on approach to assisting addicts to manage their addiction.

Mostly, those who approach the clinic for assistance are given clean syringes, to ensure that HIV and other diseases are not communicated. Addicts whose health has been impaired are given medical treatment to ensure that their health condition does not deteriorate. Under the careful watch of health professionals, care is taken that drug overdoses don't occur. The dedication by the health professionals who believe their work at Insite minimizes harm to addicts through harm reduction was validated by the Supreme Court decision.

There have been studies and evaluations conducted on the safety and efficacy of the program of harm reduction convincing those already convinced that they are on the right track. There was a study published in the respected British medical journal The Lancet that corroborated the findings of safety and usefulness. There are any number of scientists and professionals in the medical fraternity who are completely committed to the concept of harm reduction, citing fewer deaths resulting from the program.

But there are niggling doubts in the minds of many others. That such programs are in fact, bypassing a greater need, to wean drug users off drugs. To be less conciliatory to the concept of drug use, to more effectively launch programs of remediation, withdrawal and rejection of drugs. The illegal recreational drug industry is a criminal, dangerous and violent one, harming society and taking its dreadful toll on its victims. Do we really want to be complicit in its use?

When clients come to the Insite clinic for assistance they bring with them drugs which they have acquired illegally on the criminal black market. This is a market that kills not only rival drug dealers, but the people who use those drugs as well. It cheapens life, it makes people helpless and hopeless, leading them to lives of petty crime and sometimes violence, to fund their drug habit. Society should be in the business of discouraging, not encouraging consumption.

Police forces do not subscribe to the usefulness of Insite and the growing call for other such sites to be opened elsewhere. The safety and security that police forces have been trained and called upon in their professional life to support is effectively undermined when the criminally illegal is being countenanced, and victims' ongoing need supported rather than diverted. There are those claiming that Insite represents the foundation of society's response to health and social harms stemming from drug addiction.

Should the foundation of society's response to health and social harms stemming from drug addiction be interventions such as they offer, or should the foundation rather represent education to teach the potentially vulnerable how destruction drug use is to their futures, and to offer instead when addiction has occurred, alternate avenues leading to, counselling, disruption and an end to that addiction?