B.C. safe-injection site should stay open: top court

This morning, the SCoC found unanimously that the site can stay open. And that in such matters, provincial rules trump federal ones! Take *that* National Energy Program!

Hopefully the Supreme Court will continue to keep the rabid prohibitionists in the CPC in check. I bet king Steve is fuming about this.

This is good news Insite saves lives and helps get people off drugs. This is a triumph of truth over ideology.

The cops will be pissed, but I think they should spend more time breaking the grip organized crime has on the Vancouver waterfront. You can be easy on the addicts and hard on the pushers. I think we should double-down on the pushers in case anyway mistakes our treatment of addiction as leniency towards hard drugs.

It's sad that insite is needed but I rather that then nothing at all. The war has causalities and insite is little more than triage.

A bit off topic, but I've noticed massive ideological differences in opinion over this.

The National Post comments (and recommendations) were purely negative in regards to this decision, while the Globe and Mail and CBC they were almost unanimously positive.

Divided country?

Legalise it all, sell it in government run stores, tax it.

We're talking about injectable drugs here, so no, selling in govt run stores is too lax an approach. But giving them by prescription and dispensing them under secure, tightly regulated conditions would be the way to go. I'm not sure how well taxing these drugs would work, because addicts would still turn to crime if the price is too high. But one bit of good news that the free heroin study found was that a currently available drug worked just as well as giving heroin for harm reduction. It's way cheaper and already legal. We should start with a larger scale trial of handing out that to addicts that qualify. (Must have tried to rehab a few times, etc.)

I guess ironically, pot could be taxed and cost more than hard drugs, because you don't see a lot of pot addicts doing crimes to get it.

I don't see how the prescription idea is going to work. What doctor who has sworn the Hippocratic Oath is going to write someone a prescription for recreational use Heroin?

It works in Switzerland. The doctors of the free heroin trial didn't feel their Hippocratic oath was compromised. The point is it's not recreational - you can't just waltz in and say you want to try heroin. You have to have already made attempts to quit and be addicted to get it.

Are you really in favor of Brock's idea of just selling heroin at your local government liquor and other drugs store?

I don't think its very hard to get heroin now if you wanted it. I'd rather the money went to the government. I'd rather someone was keeping track of who was buying how much. I'd rather the place they go to get it, gives them access to treatment and encouraged them to use it. I don't think prescriptions would do any better than they have for Oxycodone. They just create a separate black market for people whose doctor wont give them a prescription.

It's not hard at all to get heroin. I think you missed part of what I wrote - prescription and secure, regulated delivery. In Switzerland they have to go to an injection site to get it. I wasn't just talking about getting a prescription and then you have unlimited access from a pharmacy. (Tho it does work that way with methadone). Basically I'm thinking Insites that dispense. By presription I meant you can't just waltz into your insite and get the drugs with no previous examination, etc.

As for govt getting the money for heroin, I'm not sure how that would work. Most addicts around here aren't capable of working, would have no money to pay unless they do crimes. We don't really have the infrastructure to determine if someone can afford to pay or not - guess we could set that up, but that's a big bureaucratic cost with likely lots of cheating going on.

I don't think its very hard to get heroin now if you wanted it. I'd rather the money went to the government. I'd rather someone was keeping track of who was buying how much. I'd rather the place they go to get it, gives them access to treatment and encouraged them to use it. I don't think prescriptions would do any better than they have for Oxycodone. They just create a separate black market for people whose doctor wont give them a prescription.

Well said.

Well I'm not in favour of free heroin for anyone. They're paying for it now. I'd rather just change who they are paying, and use the revenue to fight the problem. I don't know anything about what Switzerland is doing though, I'll take a look.

I admit I don't like the idea however, you can't argue with the fact they are working. I just need to get my head around the idea of the government subsidising illegal drug use.

I am glad they are having success, perhaps its just my old fashioned sense of values that makes me not like the idea.