Canada approves safe injecting room (a.k.a. 'shooting gallery')

The Sydney Morning Herald ^ | June 27,2003 | staff writer

[yankeedame]

Canada approves safe injecting room

June 27 2003

Canada's Health Ministry has approved North America's first sanctioned "safe injection site" for illegal drug users, a controversial project in Vancouver that the United States has criticised as state-sponsored suicide.

The clinic, in the heart of the city's drug- and crime-ridden Downtown Eastside neighbourhood, will provide a setting where addicts can shoot up under the supervision of a registered nurse in a a legal safe zone.

The aim of the scheme, as with the trial under way in Kings Cross, Sydney, is to offer "injection supervision" to prevent overdoses, provide clean needles to reduce the spread of HIV, hepatitis and other blood-borne diseases epidemic among intravenous drug users, and offer help to those who want to kick their habits.

The national Health Ministry has granted the program - which has been endorsed by Vancouver police - a federal criminal exemption. Addicts cannot be arrested for possessing illegal narcotics while using the clinic.

"Users can bring their own drugs, heroin or cocaine onto the site and inject them," said Viviana Zanocco, spokeswoman for the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority.

John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, this year described the proposed injecting room - which could be operating by September with the help of a Canadian government grant - as "state-sponsored personal suicide".

He argued it would enable addicts to continue poisoning themselves in a clinical setting near the US border.

The Boston Globe

[davisfh]

"Canada approves safe injecting room"

I don't get this. If I were a smoker and suggested that the government provide a "safe inhaling" room for smokers, would it be look upon favorably?

[Kenton]

Looks like Canada has decided to compete with Holland for a certain segment of the tourist trade...

[Cultural Jihad]

What's next on the moral-liberal's 'harm reduction' agenda? Orgy pits where trained nurses make sure that condoms are used properly? Heaven forbid that we expect others to adhere to morality which alone is the basis for successful self-governance.

[AxelPaulsenJr]

This one will no doubt get pinged to the WOD list. Maybe all the drug users in this country will now take the opportunity to move to Canada, Eh?

[BrooklynGOP]

That's fine with me. Keep them where you can see them.

[-YYZ-]

"John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, this year described the proposed injecting room - which could be operating by September with the help of a Canadian government grant - as "state-sponsored personal suicide". "


Unlike the US where your constitution says that matters like this should be the states' concern but in actuality the federal gov't constantly interferes, the Canadian federal gov't (although its not required to) actually gives the provinces a fair bit of leeway in how they approach these things. The federal gov't is allowing them to carry out this experiment because the city of Vancouver and the province of British Columbia want to try it.

Now, as to whether it is a good idea or not, that's debatable, but apparently a lot of people in Vancouver think it's worth a try. I have doubts about the utility of this approach, myself.

[joesnuffy]

So if you "shoot up" and drive...is the state gonna be responsible for any damage you do...
or human life you take while all drugged up...
Including the rapes murders thefts etc the "shooter" commits in order to score some more junk to shoot up in the state's (tax payer funded) shooting gallery?

[jmc813]

WOD Ping

[DonQ]

England tried this about a quarter-century ago with very limited success. To begin with, it wasn't a tourist attraction; it was available only to registered addicts. Second it was done by the addict in one of those scrubbed bureaucratic clinic rooms, by him/herself without any company except maybe a clinic nurse or med tech, and the addict was expected to stay in that room for a considerable period after the injection.

This scheme failed because there were a very considerable (perhaps a majority) of heroin addicts who did not wish to register as such with any sort of bureaucracy. Also, one of the dubious comforts of illegal drugs was taking it in amongst friends and sometimes in the comfort of someone's home; the clinic prevented all that, although it admittedly was better than the ugly situations that many addicts shot up. Additionally, the clinic provided the govt-approved heroin, presumably somewhat safer than street drugs but also eliminating the options of blends or mixtures that some addicts actually preferred.

Better and cheaper than a govt-established shooting gallery might be a needle exchange program.

[jmc813]

Why not let the good people of Canada decide for themselves? ;-)

[goodnesswins]

That's right near where we lived for 1 1/2 years.....lets just say, maybe it'll keep the dirty needles off the streets...yeah, right....and keep the druggies from bashing in car windows in the middle of the night....yeah, right....and lower the break-in/steal rate for cars....yeah, right....the idiocy in Canada continues.

[goodnesswins]

I believe Vancouver already has tried a "needle exchange program."

[bigfootbob]

I've read in the Seattle fishwraps the police in Vancouver, Canadastan are lobbying hard for this provision. The police believe it will help them containing the problem. Who knows it may work. After all, the current policies are working so well now..../sarcasm.

[robertpaulsen]

"Addicts cannot be arrested for possessing illegal narcotics while using the clinic. Users can bring their own drugs, heroin or cocaine onto the site and inject them,"

Now, every addict arrested for possession on the street will claim to be "on their way" to the clinic. Smart law.

As with other state sponsored shooting galleries, I would expect this one to be offering free drugs to addicts in a few years. We'll see.

[Cultural Jihad]

I would expect this one to be offering free drugs to addicts in a few years.

"Free" drugs?! What are they? Supposedly, poverty infringes on their "right" to do drugs. Hence after the libertarian-socialists enact reparations, they will then invent the Free Lunch; just get ready to dig deeper into your overly-taxed wallet.

[jmc813]

"Free" drugs?! What are they?

You haven't been reading about Bush's push for free drugs over the last few weeks?

Hence after the libertarian-socialists

Oh, this is classic. Mr. "wider family of human society" calling libertarians socialists. I needed a laugh.

[Cultural Jihad]

Libertarian communism is not a new idea... it is a term that has been used at least as far back as the first decades of the 1900's. New movements like the Libertarian Party and so-called anarcho-capitalism represent rightwingers who wish to steal the basic words and ideas of anarchists and make them stand for capitalism and a government of bosses and corporations. These people claim to be for a "free market", but this simply means corporate domination of all areas of life, a weak labor movement, and environmental destruction all over the planet. Only an organized anarchist and libertarian communist movement will defeat them.

http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Embassy/8970/

---

THE LIBERTARIAN NATIONAL SOCIALIST GREEN PARTY

PARTY OVERVIEW

Ok. Let's see if we've got this straight - these are politically correct, environmentally concerned Nazis who support equality, believe in the principles of the Constitution, and promote individual rights and liberties, and the legalization of drugs? Really?

OFFICIAL PLATFORM STATEMENT
FROM THE OFFICIAL WEB PAGE

"The Libertarian National Socialist Green Party is an independent political movement dedicated to restoring autonomy to the citizen, equity to the opportunity presented within society, a change in attitudes toward normative objectives, a reduction of legal complexity and applications to the individual, a focus on ensuring rights and freedom for all Americans, an environmental policy which puts our children before our immediate needs, an immigrant naturalization plan, and a return to the focus on justice and individual rights in America.

We are individuals like you who have chosen not to accept the easy answers of modern society and to search to the root of all philosophical method to ascertain the essence of behavior. Our findings have led us to reject Judeo-Christian moral standards, victim mentality political behavior, capital-centric value systems, and authority as a means of accomplishing any meaningful change in our world.

The Libertarian National Socialist Green Party is in part based upon the work of the Libertarian party from whom we gain appreciation for the individual spirit and independence from a morally-judgmental, active government. From the Green party we inherit extreme concepts of practical ecological value. Our emphasis upon self-reliance, diligence, and individual labor without interruption from the herd or the whining of the weak comes from the National Socialist regime of Germany, who despite dubious victories maintained the most powerful empire on earth".

[MrLeRoy]

Heaven forbid that we expect others to adhere to morality which alone is the basis for successful self-governance.

How has requiring morality via the War On Some Drugs been working out?

[jmc813]

Quite an interesting link, but do you REALLY think that more than .00005% of l/Libertarians consider them to be a libertarian group? There's much more socialism going on in the Democrat/Republican parties.