IT'S TIME WE BLUNTED B.C.'S NEEDLE CULTURE

It's high time we did something radical to reduce the misery caused by drugs.

It's not just downtown types who are hurt by drugs. All of us are.

The other day, the Workers Compensation Board announced that in 1997 it
accepted 211 claims for workplace exposure to HIV, the AIDS-causing virus
now being spread by addicts who share infected needles.

The WCB, in fact, shelled out more than $235,000 on HIV wage-loss claims by
workers who got pricked by needles on the job.

Each underwent an uncomfortable, 28-day course of "anti-retroviral" drug
treatment to make sure they were not infected with the human
immunodeficiency virus.

The cost of these treatments, of course, was not included in the WCB
figures. The treatment kits were provided by the B.C. Centre for
Excellence in HIV/AIDS, funded by the health ministry.

Centre administration director Brian Harrigan tells me that, in the 1997-98
fiscal year, the centre provided 640 kits for accidental or occupational
exposure to HIV across B.C. -- at a cost of about $500,000. A further
$100,000 or so went to labor and other costs associated with dispensing the
pills.

In other words, taxpayers likely spent more than $800,000 last year
treating those pricked with needles believed to have been infected by HIV.

The victims included a construction worker who discovered a discarded
needle in a bird's nest and a ski-patrol member who got pricked helping out
an unconscious skier.

The risk of contracting HIV from an infectious needle is actually not that
great. It's three in 1,000 (0.3 per cent) for HIV. The risks are much
higher for the easily transmitted viruses of hepatitis B (30 per cent) and
hepatitis C (10 per cent).

But it says something about our society that, in beautiful B.C., we have to
be frightened of needles sticking out of skiers' backpacks.

And let's not forget all the crime and other havoc caused by these
so-called recreational drugs. So far this year at least 225 British
Columbians have died from cocaine and heroin.

Well, you may say, those who shoot up in litter-strewn alleys only have
themselves to blame. Well, yes. They are the victims of their own stupidity.

But we are compounding it by refusing to admit that drug abuse is a public
health problem that should be solved by doctors and health professionals,
not by police and lawyers.

It's time to end the failed war on drugs. It's time to end the prohibition.

That does not mean opening up heroin drug marts all over the province. It
does mean adopting such sensible proposals as Vancouver East MP Libby
Davies' plan to allow doctors to prescribe heroin to addicts in clean,
controlled settings.

You don't have to believe the socialist Davies. Try listening to what a
host of conservative public officials are now saying.

Try listening to University of B.C. professor Dr. Martin Schechter, one of
the world's top AIDS experts, who studies diseases for a living. "You will
discover that the vast majority of the harm does not come from the drug,"
he tells me. "It comes from the prohibition."

Schechter says if drugs could be quality-tested and used in a safe way,
there would be no spread of HIV and hepatitis. For example, heroin used
under supervision is quite safe: "It's when it's used in back alleys that
it becomes deadly."

Prohibition has doubled the drug problem. Now it's time to clean up the
mess in as healthy and medically safe a way as possible.

It's time we blunted B.C.'s needle culture once and for all. It's infecting
our soul.

Checked-by: Pat Dolan