Safe-injection site in B.C. wins court protection

[sky's the limit]

Thanks DD,

All programs are not created equal, and that situation should be a good lesson to other needle exchanges and programs of this type. If the facts in that piece are accurate, then indeed it doesn't seem to be achieving the intended goal. It's not necessarily the concept that is flawed.

As I said earlier, these programs should be viewed as one part of a greater "fix," not that addictions will ever be truly "fixed."

Just because there is a glowing example of a program gone wrong, it's not reason to scuttle the entire concept. If old Orville and Wilbur had given up at the first failure, we wouldn't have "Avcanada" to log on to.... There are of course going to be issues, and unfortunately the Gov't system of social support is not ideal. It's a quantitative system whereby "results" are given the priority, but fortunately that is slowly starting to change as qualitative research and solutions are given more weight.

stl

[2R]

Excellent points ladies and gentleman .
I would not compare the misery and suffering of alcohlics to the menace of drug dealers .Never heard of alcoholics selling beers at the local high schools to get new customers for the booze companies and pay for their habit.But a drug dealer will do more damage pushing drugs to a community than a rapid pit bull could in a month of sundays.Worst pyramid sales scheme ever invented.
It is good we all agree that those who need help and ask for it should get it .A caring hand up out of despair not support of a disease that kills a persons dignity.As for drug dealers i am glad i am not completely alone with my backward old fashioned thoughts that it is better to kill one pusher than watch a city destroyed by disease.Perhaps if they were labelled dangerous offenders when jailed because of the damage they cause to a community everyone would get some relief from this menace to our communities.
Perhaps some here are right there is nothing we can do about it .If the guys and gals with the guns cannot stop it .What hope do we have of protecting our children ,or ourselves ???

[xsbank]

I know that there are drug dealers out there who would be willing to sell me some, if I had the dough, so why don't I? Would you accept that I am an otherwise healthy and relatively priviledged member of our society (God knows I pay enough taxes)? So what is happening to those who spend their first $20 on their first shot of heroin?

If there is such a huge demand for needles, doesn't that mean that there is a huge demand for drugs?

If there is a huge demand for drugs, why aren't we giving it away? Killing the profit motive, providing pure drugs and removing the necessity for an addict to stab a cabdriver for a 'hit?'

Why do we have to be so down on the drugs? Isn't it the process of obtaining and taking them that grosses us out, not the mere fact that someone wants them? If there is such a huge economy thriving on the consumption of same, wouldn't we be better to get involved in the process, rather than trying to pick up the pieces?

I'll bet a significant proportion of the readers of this site do some sort of drug, be it beer to marijuana, on their days off. Why do they feel superior to those who use the less fashionable drugs?

A whole new attitude to the consumption of drugs is required. Turning your nose up will never help.

[sky's the limit]

There's one very salient point that is being missed here.

For the actual addicts, the people who we're discussing, life is often extremely miserable on a number of levels - abuse, mental illness, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, drug/alcohol addictions, and the "addiction" isn't the worst of those evils to them - in fact, it's often a way to cope. It's an escape, and one many of them feel they can't live without.

We're focusing on the drugs as being the major issue here, and it's simply not the case with a large number of people who are "addicts." Some of the stories I hear about Meth addicts, or alcoholics(like my Uncle who drank himself to death - literally) are enough to break your heart. These are people, and the issue needs to be humanized. It's just not black and white, as much as we'd all like to think it should be.

As I've been saying all along, the drugs, and by extension, the injection site, are only parts of the problem and parts of the fix.


stl

[Ogee]

Look, 2R, I don't want to be seen as riding your ass, because that's not the case. But you are wrong in your reasoning, and you're being wrong doesn't affect all these evil drug dealers in the slightest, it affects their victims and their ability to gain some relief from their suffering and to at least reduce the risks of their addiction. You have a responsibility to be right when being wrong causes other people harm. That's why some of your ideas are challenged here. I'm just going to go through your post and make some comments within it.

Excellent points ladies and gentleman .
I would not compare the misery and suffering of alcohlics to the menace of drug dealers .Of course you wouldn't, because they aren't related. But the misery and suffering of alcoholics is related to the vast empires of legal production and distribution of alcohol. Neither I, nor any other reasonable person, suggests that alcohol should be denied to everyone, i.e. outright prohibition. It is prohibition, not drug use, that results in the harm from drugs. I know that is slightly incorrect. There are some very dangerous drugs that are prohibited, and the reasons seem sound. But the result clearly isn't. Prohibition is a dismal failure. Legalization of cocaine and heroin and crack and LSD, can't say I'd support that either. Harm reduction, I support fully. Never heard of alcoholics selling beers at the local high schools to get new customers for the booze companies and pay for their habit.But a drug dealer will do more damage pushing drugs to a community than a rapid pit bull could in a month of sundays.Worst pyramid sales scheme ever invented. None of this is an argument, man, its just your own colorful way of looking at things through slogans and exaggerations and general guff. Booze companies don't have to get "alcoholics" selling alcohol to children at schools, they can legally advertise, and the truth is that very few people who use alcohol get "hooked". And no, the rabid pit bull would do far more harm to any community than a drug dealer. Rabies is a deadly disease and either that, or the pit bull will kill many. That's the type of exaggeration that doesn't help your argument and which reduces your credibility in this discussion.
It is good we all agree that those who need help and ask for it should get it .A caring hand up out of despair not support of a disease that kills a persons dignity.As for drug dealers i am glad i am not completely alone with my backward old fashioned thoughts that it is better to kill one pusher than watch a city destroyed by disease. I'd say you are absolutely alone on that. I can't think of any city that has been "destroyed by disease" since the days of the Plague or Black Death or whatever hundreds of years ago. Once again, using wild stuff like that doesn't do your credibility any good. Perhaps if they were labelled dangerous offenders when jailed because of the damage they cause to a community everyone would get some relief from this menace to our communities. I've had a theory for a number of years now about how to deal with this. I think that anyone who wants to use hard drugs should be able to register as a consumer. The government supplies these drugs to these consumers. But its only supply is what it seizes from illegal drug traffickers. So enforcement against trafficking continues. So when enforcement seizes say a ton of cocaine, that is checked for purity and lack of contaminants, and goes into government supply. The supply is at say $10 a gram instead of whatever it is now, last I heard years ago is that it was $100 a gram, but I'm surely out of touch on that. When there is nothing in the government warehouse, then its back to the dealers until more seizures. But what dealer is going to invest in cocaine imports when his or some other dealers supply might get seized and drive the price back to less than it cost to bring it in. And one other thing. Consumers who commit crimes to support their habit, i.e. in times of shortage as who couldn't afford $10 grams, would be sentenced to treatment at a remote facility, fly in only, where there are not imprisoned but totally isolated from drugs and have programs made available to them to restore their dignity and give them the confidence they need to go back to society without a monkey on their backs and live up to their potentials. And the dealers. They get sentenced to the same places, but they are in a prison and don't have the same freedoms the addicts do. The dealers serve the addicts. They cook and clean and mop their floors and make their beds and clean their toilets and wash their clothes and are basically their personal slaves. I see that as a form of justice and it makes the dealers pay back for the harm they have done to these people. I don't deny they do harm, but we're not a society that kills people for anything but being Taliban.
Perhaps some here are right there is nothing we can do about it .If the guys and gals with the guns cannot stop it .What hope do we have of protecting our children ,or ourselves ??? You know, I've got children and strangely enough, I've never worried for a second about them and drug dealers. I am worried about them and all of us living in a supposed democracy when some right wing cockroach that got only 18% of the votes of eligible voters ruling my life or theirs in any way at all. And trying to import failed American Drug War policies into this country. And something can be done about all this. Insite is a very good example of what can be done. Start killing dealers, and they will start killing police when they are busted for something they could be killed for. And innocent bystanders.

[xsbank]

The problem with isolated 'prisons' is that the people who run them are sentenced to live there too... otherwise, there is some land available on Baffin Island...

I think that all drugs should be legal, free and readily available. Antisocial behaviour will still be a crime, such as public drunkeness, but really, until we can come up with a method to ensure that all of our societal members are healthy and happy, we will never stop the consumption of strong drugs. I say give it away and put the Hell's and the Vietnamese and all the other gangs out of business, let those in society who want to live their lives stoned or in some kind of fog, do so. The money saved by not chasing these people with the courts, not having to sweep up all the broken glass from the car break-ins, not having to do all the repairs will pay for all the free drugs that would be needed. The excess police and the courts could go back to protecting the rest of us from the really gruesome "father-stabbers and mother-rapers."

Ask yourself why you are not a hard-drug user, what it would take to get you to try them; ask yourself why you will be going out to swill beer tonight?

Without getting personal or being rude, ask yourselves why the admitted alcoholics on this site have fought so hard to get dry, and stay dry?

If you are a smoker, ask yourself why you smoke? Admit that despite society hating you when you light up, you can afford to buy your drugs, you can use them and still function, you can probably hold a job but you need your fix every hour or so. You stink, mind you, and you are reviled, but what is the difference?

Attitude, from the rest of us, that's all.



People, generally, do not want to be wasting their lives.

[2R]

Some great ideas keep them coming .It proves we are capable of reasoned debate .who knows maybe someone will listen

[Cat Driver]

Am I to understand that my idea of beheading drug dealers in public like the Saudi's do is a good idea?

[BoostedNihilist]

If there is a huge demand for drugs, why aren't we giving it away? Killing the profit motive, providing pure drugs and removing the necessity for an addict to stab a cabdriver for a 'hit?'

I think we could just tax and regulate it to kill the profit motive.

The problem is we are caught in a bad spot

What we have to reconcile is the fact that, other than martial law we will not stop the flow of drugs. So, the drugs are here. That's bad, yes. Even in Saudi Arabia, where they use the death sentence, people still deal drugs. This says to me, that no matter what penalty you impose, there is not one severe enough short of brutal torture that might influence those who sell the shit.

People cite many examples of programs not working and being shut down. Yeah, this is true. Two programs can operate the same, but have a completely different mission. Perhaps there was a difference between the missions and the program was shut down based on different criteria... I don't know, do you?

I agree with xsbank to a degree

We should legalize it, regulate it, Tax it, and download the cost of supporting the addicts to the drug producers/dealers (in addition to the tax) while the tax would be used to set up an education program, and the profits being put into general revenue. That would really deal with the problem.

Or, cut the heads off the drug dealers... if they're not paying taxes they deserve it anyways.

[2R]

That suggestion is debatable .

so is this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillotine

[bandaid]

Biggest problem that I see with legalising any of the hard drugs is who would be responsible should someone overdose? Are you going to watch every person you sell to shoot up? Do you watch everyone who buys a case of beer drink it? Who then becomes liable should that overdose death occur? The fight will still be in the streets, the drug dealers will just undercut the governments prices. Legalise it here and every druggie from around the world will be moving to Canada, the cost to our health care alone would bankrupt this country.
So what is the answer, do we go all middle east on the drug dealers? Not in Canada, we are pretty much a bunch of bleeding hearts here.
In my heart I believe that the fight has to start with the children and at a very young age. Not only do you have to push more education in schools, you also have to be more congnisant of the children at risk and you have to have the balls in legal ease to deal with each of these children's risks. If you removed all the children from an abusers house and the only way these people would get them back is to prove that they are clean and sober, and institute a 0 tolerance for re-offending you may make some headway over time. Would be an interesting experiment that would be initially very expensive.
And lastly, you have to provide hope. Make it possible for these addicts to make a better life for themselves. I know that many think that they are the authors of their own mistakes, but if you knew some of the stories that I have been privy to over my 28 years, you might have a little different perspective on the problem. their are some real assholes out there trying to pass themselves off as parents.

[Cat Driver]

bandaid:

I am sure that you see more misery than we would ever imagine.

Having spent my life out there in a lot the worlds most desperately poor and war torn countries I also have been able to observe how different cultures deal with these issues.

I'll take Singapore over Vancouver any day when it comes to how to deal with crime.

[bandaid]

I'd take most countries over Canada in how they deal with crime. But the question of the day is how to deal with addiction?

[sky's the limit]

bandaid:


I'll take Singapore over Vancouver any day when it comes to how to deal with crime.

Come on Cat. In Singapore, you'd have been in jail since before computers were invented for criticizing the Gov't..... I don't think their definition of "crime" would suit your personality too well!

stl

[Cat Driver]

STL, just goes to show that no one system is perfect.

[sky's the limit]

Touche.


stl

[ottawa,kan]

If you read the very first part of this post carefully, it seems to say that the Judge in this case has issues with the constitutionality of many of Canadas laws on drug use and trafficing.That in turn seems to imply a court effort towards legalization on constitutional grounds. Of course I haven't read the actual opiniuon, and the reporter quoted there in the post says it's not so, but then again we all now what idiots reporters are. Do you see legalization coming out of this ruling?? A constitutional right to shoot up? Now that's libertarian, huh???

[Ogee]

It is a very well reasoned decision.

He is basically saying that a blanket prohibition of these substances without any consideration of use is unconstitutional. That is so because where that prohibition prohibits possession that is associated with any form of medical treatment, it is lawmaking outside the authority of the federal government because matters of health are within the exclusive constitutional authority of the governments of the provinces.

The exemption that Insite has is an exemption from the criminal law prohibition of possession within premises, as the addicts bring their drugs with them to the injection sites, and those who operate these sites know that these drugs are on their premises, hence they would normally be guilty of possession.

The judge says that in these circumstances, this does not come within the constitutional authority of the federal government and no exemption is, or was ever, needed.

[. ._]

I wish I could bring my own beer to a bar. It would be waaay cheaper.

-istp

[JakeYYZ]

I wish I could bring my own beer to a bar. It would be waaay cheaper.

-istp

I always wonder if these liberals show up at AA meetings with a couple of 24’s of beer that are sterilized.

[JakeYYZ]

Vancouver is like a northern Disneyland for stoners and freaks.
You're out of crack? No problem, here's a dime bag. You don't have a pipe? No problem, bong on this. You don't have a safe injection site? No problem, just use one of our government subsidized shoot-up houses. Need welfare? Sign here. You have a drug addiction? That must be societies fault.
C'mon people, have some sympathy. The only reason those heroin addicts are that way is concern over their current situation. If the Canadian government would only do things like cut the military, establish national daycare, and properly fund the gun registry they'd be so calm and mellow they'd never need drugs.

The solution is obviously higher taxes.


Oh, and something about Hans Island too ….. I forget if it was to fight for it or surrender it.

[Ogee]

Vancouver is like a northern Disneyland for stoners and freaks.
You're out of crack? No problem, here's a dime bag. You don't have a pipe? No problem, bong on this. You don't have a safe injection site? No problem, just use one of our government subsidized shoot-up houses. Need welfare? Sign here. You have a drug addiction? That must be societies fault.
C'mon people, have some sympathy. The only reason those heroin addicts are that way is concern over their current situation. If the Canadian government would only do things like cut the military, establish national daycare, and properly fund the gun registry they'd be so calm and mellow they'd never need drugs.

The solution is obviously higher taxes.


Oh, and something about Hans Island too ….. I forget if it was to fight for it or surrender it.

Jake, please tell me you're not a pilot or an engineer or somebody who has a job where intellect or concern for humanity and human life is a pre-requisite?

Because that would be a shame. Your calling is so obviously as a comedian parodying red necked knuckledraggers on social issues. Great job of that. You made a couple of mistakes in your impersonation, however. Ignoramuses almost invariably write stuff riddled with spelling and grammatical errors. You gave yourself away with perfect spelling and grammar. And secondly, you are far short on the required number of uses of words like "narcotic" "liberal" "bleeding hearts" and "homosexual butt welders" Without that, everybody just knows you are making fun of rednecks. Good job though still.

[ottawa,kan]

You know it's perfectly possible to have sympathy for a persons situation and still not like the person. And it's possible to recognize that addicts are in a bind, but they still have huge negative effects on our enjoyment of our own lives and property. Your heart doesn't have to bleed all over every single aspect of the drug addicted. You can wish for rehabilitation at the same time you can wish the bastards were all locked up somewhere else ( as a wish, not a policy). You can hate the panhandling and the vomit and the stink, and still recognize that these people are human, and yet still wish that they and you were somewhere else. And sympathy and a bleeding heart isn't going to solve the drug problem. Nor is legalization. Nothing is ever going to " solve" the problem of addicts. And I think it bears mentioning that the two worst drugs in terms of numbers of lives ruined or people killed, are the two legal ones, tobacco ( cancer, heart disease and an early death) and alcohol (lives, families,careers and your liver ruined.) Nor is it completly wrong to say that some of the addicts problems are self induced, though maybe long ago. It's possible to be a conservative and still wish for a better life for others. A bleeding heart never actually solves any problems, just makes the bearer self rightous and smug. I think we may see legalization eventually, and we'll see it solve some problems and make others worse. And we'll still have a huge underclass of hopeless and addicted people. Even after Obama wins.