Here is a Salon article that seems to look favourably on "safe injection" programmes in Vancouver. I find myself quite ambivalent about this whole concept. While anything that reduces new infections of HIV and hepatitis is good for our country in general, both in terms of confining the disease and reducing the burden on our health care system, there are a lot of problems with this approach. First of all, by reducing the cost of heroin use and addiction (which this inevitably does, by making it safer, easier and less stigmatized) such initiatives will increase the number of users. Second, and without meaning to sound too callous, I wonder what responsibility the government has to prevent sane adults from the logical consequences of their freely made decisions. (Yes, yes, one can question whether addicts are sane, or acting with free will, but the great majority of drug users were of sound mind when they first decided to use a highly addictive drug. The ensuing dependency and its related problems are hardly unforeseeable consequences.) Especially in a country in which detox and rehab treatments are paid for by the government for everyone, is it really appropriate to use tax revenues to make it easier for people to stay addicted? While the centre discussed in the Salon article isn't government run, BC and Vancouver are actively preparing to start running official "maintenance" programmes. And would most people not prefer that this money go toward the treatment of babies born to addicts, or to victims of crimes caused by drugs, or to reducing waiting lists for life-saving treatments for non-elective diseases?
A potboiler thriller published in the US a few years ago had as its main character a rogue FBI agent who, after publishing warnings in major newspapers, laced the nation's drug supply with poisons. Rumour has it among several writers' groups that in the second draft, the agent had also to plot to assassinate several politicians, because far too many readers had trouble figuring out who exactly was the villain. This approach is certainly too proactive an attack on addiction for my taste; nonetheless, doing more to reduce the social, fiscal and medical costs of addiction seems at best counterproductive.
Posted by Clio at September 8, 2003 02:57 PM