The Worst Editorial Ever Written
In all the many years I have been reading newspapers, I have never, never ever, read a more wrong-headed, stupid, colossally appalling editorial as that in the Sun today.
This is the Heading:
Closing down Insite will bring out the angel of death
But the reality is that Insite IS the Angel of Death.99.9% of all Canadian citizens detest this local atrocity and understand what a dreadfully mistaken and deadly public policy it pursues.
It is only most of the politicians and the pseudo-scientists and the academics and those invested heavily in continuing failure who continue to defend the idiocy that is safe injection sites.
Scotland, faced with exactly and precisely the same problems, has woken up. In May, Scottish Parliament declared that all of their harm reduction strategies were failures and that they were now going to invest entirely in treatment.
The photograph that accompanies this worst of all editorials ever written shows The Three Wise Men signing the documents that gave birth to Insite. Honorable men, each and every one.
Rumor hasn it that one of these men is an alcoholic. We don't know that to be true. But if it is, we can understand an addict who hasn't yet faced up to his own problems happily endorsing anything that enables.
The other two are politicians. A sprinkling of pseudo-facts here, an opinion from some well-spoken murderer there, and they're off and running.
Imagine Insite being your legacy. How do they sleep at night?
Here's my legacy.
Forty years after we started it, our treatment centre is still running in Manitoba, still helping hundreds of addicts get clean and sober and stay that way.
I'm proud of our work. I feel honored that I was a part of it.
I cannot imagine for a nano-second leading an addict to a place to shoot drugs.
Fortunately, not all politicians are cut from the same cloth.
Health Minister Tony Clement is being ridiculed and personally attacked for expressing what most of you already know and believe - safe injection sites don't' help. Treatment helps.
Mr. Harper has been quietly doing a reasonable enough job as Prime Minister. He isn't in my face every morning, as Chretien was for far too many years. Yet, how quickly the silly class out here in Point Grey are quick to condemn hium because he isn't a Liberal. How quickly they forget and rush to bring back the most corrupt government in Canadian history.
Help Mr. Clement to have the courage to act on his understanding. Email him words of encouragement. He is on the right track.
