DRUG POLICY CONDONING ADDICTS IS WRONG

Even in a culture as how to put it? comfortable with its own relativism
as ours officially is, it's unlikely that a recent front-page article in
The Washington Post about Canada's "safe injection sites" for intravenous
drug users went down quite as smoothly as the morning coffee. It wasn't the
pathetic degradation of the addicts that was tough to swallow, but rather
the extremely creepy revelation that the gentle art of healing to the north
now includes such, well, harmful practices as "vein maintenance" and
"injection techniques" as part of a Canadian government-approved effort to
ensure that junkies inject themselves with their poison of choice according
to the highest medical standards.

Consider, the Canadian drug lexicon. What are "safe injection sites"? The
euphemistically named product of Canada's euphemistically named "harm
reduction" drug policy, "safe injection sites" are where Canadians may
shoot heroin, crystal methamphetamine, Drano, or whatever directly into
their bloodstreams under the expert supervision of registered nurses.

"Go flush with the skin," Patti Zettel, a nurse, instructs an addict sorry,
"client" preparing a fix (dose?) of crystal methamphetamine at Dr. Peter's
Centre, a "safe" site in Vancouver, British Columbia. "Then up. Once in the
vein, release the tourniquet. Look," the nurse says, apparently to the Post
reporter on hand. "She has got good blood flow."

Frankly, a pitiable addict's "good blood flow" is less than likely to
elicit celebratory whoops in the casual reader unless, of course, the
casual reader happens to be a "harm reducer" like Nurse Zettel. According
to the definition Ms. Zettel, along with two nursing colleagues,
articulated in a recent issue of Canadian Nurse magazine, "harm reduction
nursing" is a practice aimed at "reducing the consequences of drug use
without necessarily requiring a reduction in the drug use itself."

In other words, if a "client" is killing himself with drugs, destroying his
loved ones with drugs, reducing his community to a crime-ridden slum with
drugs, and keeping money flowing to narco-terrorists the world over, by all
means encourage the "client" to do so so long as he is harm-reducingly
equipped with a sterile syringe, a proper tourniquet, and some decent gauze.

It is disconcerting to realize that the only educating "safe injection
sites" set out to do concerns the unhealthiness of unsanitary drug use,
which often leads to HIV infection, and not the unhealthiness of drug use
in the first place.

While a few pesky kinks to Canada's new policy remain addicts, for
example, continue to risk arrest by buying the illegal drugs they bring to
"safe" sites, which operate as drug-arrest-free zones harm reduction
proponents would likely see in Lori's case evidence of "safe injection
site" success. John Walters, White House drug policy director, would
disagree. "The very name is a lie," he told the Post. "It can't be made
safe. We believe the only moral responsibility is to treat drug users. It
is reprehensible to allow people and encourage people to continue suffering."

I must say it seems doubly reprehensible for medical professionals to allow
and encourage people to continue suffering. "It's the most ethical work
I've ever done as a nurse and a human being," says Ms. Zettel. "We as a
society have reinforced their [addicts'] marginalization. They have a poor
sense of self-esteem and value. We have reinforced that. That to me is
criminal."

How it is that injection sites which would seem to promise only to keep
addicts addicted can possibly undo anyone's "marginalization" is a
mystery. As for self-esteem self-respect would be a healthier aim it's
hard to see how shooting up, however safely, can ever help.

Diana West is a columnist for the Washington Times. Distributed by the
Newspaper Enterprise Association.