BAIRD REALLY STICKING IT TO THE POOR

OF ALL THE cynical acts of the Harris government, probably none matches the
show put on this week by cabinet minister John Baird when he announced a
plan to make social assistance recipients undergo drug testing or lose
benefits.

There he stood in front of a Queen's Park news conference, grabbing syringes
from a box and tossing them around the room, doing his utmost - as if this
government hasn't done more than enough already - to incite fear and
loathing of the poor, doubling the stigma the most vulnerable in society
bear by suggesting that to be in need is almost by definition to be a drug
abuser.

Baird said that syringes are, for many people, ``the instruments of
despair.'' He said he didn't want the poor ``shooting their welfare cheques
up their arms,'' or using ``their welfare cheque to feed their drug habit
instead of feeding their children.''

The backroom spinners in Community and Social Services must have snickered
themselves silly, all but bursting their Hugo Boss suits, as they drafted
that hyperbolic drivel for him.

In expressing repugnance to this initiative, it's difficult even to know
where to start. It goes without saying that such a program of mandatory
testing is offensive to anyone concerned with civil rights, and is likely to
face court challenges.

Beyond that, however, the government's almost naked malevolence, its
breathtaking hypocrisy, its astonishing ignorance of - or indifference to -
the complex nature of addiction, which neuroscientists are just beginning to
understand, is sickening.

First, as with most diseases, addiction is scrupulously democratic. It is
spread across all socioeconomic groups. There is no evidence it is more
pervasive among social assistance recipients than any other class.

Addiction has nothing to do with intelligence, success, social standing, or
willpower. (Lord knows, there is no willpower quite like that of a painfully
hungover drunk hauling himself to work the morning after the night before.)

Anyone who has attended a 12-step meeting in this city knows he or she is as
apt to encounter Queen's Counsels and Bay St. players, award-winning actors,
athletes, authors, a sizeable contingent of media personnel and, I dare say,
the occasional politico, as they are someone who spent the previous night on
a park bench.

Nothing, but nothing, keeps someone who needs it from getting help so much
as the notion that they can't be an addict or alcoholic because they still
have a job, a house, a spouse, a bank account. And no one, but no one, has
done quite so much to perpetuate that hoary old myth - to equate addiction
with poverty - as the shameless John Baird.

Dennis Long, executive director of Breakaway, an outpatient treatment
centre, runs a methadone maintenance program and was saying yesterday he's
had clients ``who are lawyers; we've had people drive up in BMWs.''

In fact, if anything, research tends to show higher incidence of substance
abuse among those in high-pressure jobs, he says. Cops are particularly
susceptible. Doctors, too, especially since they have easy access to supply.

It's funny, since the former carry guns and the latter wield scalpels,
either of which might be injurious, both on the public payroll, that Baird
isn't proposing to take his urine jars to police stations or hospitals.

No, Baird was obviously out to stigmatize the poor - his choice of photo op
props making that point plain to all. It was a syringe - the most pejorative
and frightening image he could find - that Baird chose to use as his
``instrument of despair.''

That despite the fact, Long says, that ``needle junkies are a very, very
small problem relative to the population (of drug users). The major problem
is alcohol; always has been, probably always will be.''

It is subject to vastly more abuse and is the cause of vastly more personal
and property damage than all illicit drugs combined, Long says. While
Baird's posters showed needle-injecting addicts, while his anecdotes were
about people with track marks ``up and down their arms,'' a more realistic
characterization of the ``instruments of despair'' would have probably been
a shot glass or draft glass. But that would have made it too mainstream, too
middle-class. That would have made it far less easy for Baird to demonize
social-assistance recipients, to define them as lawbreakers, as something
alien and anti-social, as something other than us.

Third, the notion that this government has any real concern for the serious
health problem of addiction is laughable. A report released earlier this
year on drug use in Toronto shows that more young addicts and alcoholics
want help but face waiting lists of months - delays that in many cases could
literally be fatal. Services for those voluntarily seeking treatment have
long been underfunded.

``Hypocritical,'' Long said, ``would not be too strong a word.''

Neither would despicable.

Or calculated. Or callous.

But when it comes to the Harris government and its unspeakable treatment of
the poor and vulnerable, words usually fail us .