VANCOUVER — The federal government’s approach to harm-reduction initiatives like Vancouver’s Insite safe drug-consump-tion site is “folly,” says veteran politician, diplomat and AIDS activist Stephen Lewis.
Rather than being made to jump through hoops, Insite should serve as a model for the rest of the country, Lewis said.
A recent survey of injection-drug users in Toronto found that 61 per cent have Hepatitis C and six per cent are HIV-positive, said Lewis, co-founder of the international advocacy organization AIDS-Free World. He was the keynote speaker Wednesday at the annual Union of B.C. Municipalities convention in Vancouver.
Those statistics help make the case that Vancouver’s Insite should be replicated elsewhere, Lewis said.
Leading experts in all fields related to HIV-drug use from around the world have supported programs that include distribution of clean needles, opiate therapy and safe injection.
Such harm-reduction policies are important, but the federal government’s response seems to be punitive and retaliatory, Lewis said.
“The government of Canada has introduced Bill 65, which will make it almost impossible to provide an exemption to the drug act which would allow these various service centres to be created —and that’s just folly. It’s absolutely ridiculous. In fact, I don’t understand it,” he said.
A series of successful court challenges prompted the Supreme Court of Canada to rule in 2011 in favour of allowing Insite to continue operating indefinitely, but it has to renew its exemption from Health Canada under Canada’s drug laws in March 2014.
The federal government’s introduction of the Respect for Communities Act sets out a long list of criteria that must be met to get an exemption to operate an injection site. Those include the need for an applicant to provide information outlining the views of police, municipal leaders, public health officials and provincial health ministers.
In addition, the applicant has to provide documentation that shows the site’s expected impact on crime rates, treatment options for drug users, the public health reasons for needing such a site and evidence there are resources to sustain the site’s operations.
In an interview following his address, Lewis said he expects the federal government’s approach ultimately will fail.
“I don’t think the federal government is going to prevail in this. I hope the federal government doesn’t prevail, period. I hope they [the Conservatives] lose in 2015 by a huge margin,” he said.
“But I must say that the force of the Supreme Court decision on Insite, and the way in which it has demonstrated the value in dealing in a humane manner with injecting-drug users rather than in a punitive manner, that’s really admirable and I think it will be copied.”
