MEDICAL HEALTH OFFICER: WAR ON DRUGS HAS FAILED

The war on drugs has failed and Nova Scotia needs to turn to
so-called harm-reduction programs, says the province's chief medical
health officer.

"The war on drugs ... we know that doesn't work," says Robert Strang.
"It hasn't done anything to reduce our drug use. In fact, it's put
the marketing and promotion of drugs into the criminal elements."

Diane Bailey, Mainline needle exchange program director, agrees. She
herself knows harm reduction can work, having been on methadone for
three years.

"I tried various times to come off drugs after 25 years of using, and
I was lucky enough to get on the methadone program in 1990," she says.

Harm reduction involves such things as needle exchanges, handing out
condoms and safe injection sites, Strang says.

Direction 180, at the intersection of Gottingen and Cornwallis
streets in Halifax, provides methadone, a synthetic opiate, as
treatment for people with opiate addiction.

The most commonly abused opiate is Dilaudid, a very potent
painkiller, said program director Cindy MacIsaac.

Addicts typically crush the tablets, dissolve them in water and
inject them intravenously without medical supervision.

The centre also provides primary care, counselling and education, as
part of its harm-reduction approach. It gets funding from the
district health authority, but not enough, says MacIsaac.

"I don't think I would be alive if (it wasn't for) this program,"
said Tom Greig, a former long-time Dilaudid and crack addict.

Greig, 45, said the support he found at Direction 180 and Mainline, a
block from Direction 180, helped him quit these drugs.

He's had no criminal record since going on the methadone program, he said.

"I didn't have to steal anymore; I could buy food," he said. "For
once, I could be me without having to wheel, deal and steal."

The methadone program looks after 133 clients, but 75 people are on
the waiting list, said MacIsaac.