For those interested in the area of HIV/AIDS prevention and IV drug policy, I thought I’d provide some happy news about the Insite safe injecting room facility in Vancouver, British Columbia. As I’ve noted in the comments section on my original blog, the British Columbia Supreme Court has found that under Section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (”life, liberty and the security of the person“), it has been found that the Canadian federal government cannot shut down the Insite facility, which can now remain open beyond the original termination point when the exemption from federal drug laws was scheduled to lapse, June 30.
Understandably, over in Ottawa, federal Health Minister Tony Clements is fuming about the British Columbia Supreme Court’s perfidy in actually providing a constitutional safeguard against precipitate decisions by a fanatically prohibitionist federal government, which seems determined to ignore the abundance of public health data which shows harm reduction to Downtown Eastside Vancouver IV drug users, and reduced criminal justice and downstream public health costs in addiction treatment of the clients of Insite.
Still, since when do populist social conservatives let a little thing like substantive proof that contradicts their dogma get in the way of ideology and prejudice? Unfortunately, it doesn’t mean that Insite is safe home quite yet, as a Canadian higher jurisdiction court might overrule the BC Supreme Court’s earlier decision. However, this incident does show the value and worth of a Canadian-style Charter of Rights and Freedoms in our own national context- even if our own IV drug use patterns and HIV/AIDS transmission risks are insufficient to warrant a safe injecting centre similar to that in Vancouver.
Recommended:
Toronto Globe and Mail
2 responses so far ↓
1 Craig Young // May 31, 2008 at 1:22 pm
And yes, federal Health Minister Tony Clements has announced that he will be appealing the decision, arguing that injecting drugs itself is a source of harm, and that repeated evidence-based public health studies only suggest researcher bias…?!
Meanwhile, there’s another, HIV-prevention oriented safe injecting room, the St Peters Centre, operating in Vancouver. And in Toronto, Ontario’s public health officials are scouting out sites for that province’s own facility.
2 Craig Young // Jun 6, 2008 at 2:20 pm
And to complicate matters still further, Quebec has announced plans for its own safe-injecting room facility in Montreal, leading to a curiously muted response from Health Minister Clements.
Not unreasonably, BC’s Insite supporters are
annoyed at his perceived double standards, given
his stubborn resistance to accept evidence-based studies of Insite’s benefits. However, pragmatism may underlie this exceptionalism- as a minority government, the federal Tories hope to pick up seats in Quebec, which is fiercely defensive of its provincial autonomy and francophone origins.
Source: Globe and Mail
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