AT LAST! AT LONG, BLOODY LAST!

'Harm reduction' doesn't work

Editorial: National Post
Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Last week, it was announced that the Conservative government will soon unveil a new national anti-drug strategy. The plan is said to feature a get-tough approach to illegal drugs, including a crackdown on grow-ops and drug gangs. And while it will also (wisely) include tens of millions for rehabilitation of addicts and for a national drug prevention campaign, it is said to retreat from safe-injection sites and other fashionable "harm-reduction" strategies introduced by the previous Liberal government.

To which we say: Good. This editorial column has long urged a softening of drug policy on marijuana and other non-addictive recreational substances. But heroin and similarly addictive drugs are a different story. Moreover, safe injection sites don't work. And they send the wrong message, too, promoting disrespect for the rule of law by having government facilitating the consumption of illegal substances.

Safe-injection sites (SIS)-- typically inner-city facilities where addicts may go to shoot up with clean needles under the watchful eye of medical specialists --are often said to work wonders. Benefits claimed on behalf of Insite, Canada's one and only SIS in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside since 2003, include reduced needle sharing, reduced spread of deadly diseases such as HIV and hepatitis, fewer needles discarded in surrounding neighbourhoods and fewer addicts overdosing in alleys. Lives have been saved, advocates claim, the "well-being of drug users improved," and all without increased street dealing around Insite.

Too bad most of the proof to back these positive claims come from SIS proponents or the academics who devise harm-reduction theories. Police here, and in Europe (where they have lots of experience with SISs) tell a very different tale.

When Insite applied to have its three-year licence renewed last fall, the RCMP told Health Canada it had "concerns regarding any initiative that lowers the perceived risks associated with drug use. There is considerable evidence to show that, when the perceived risks associated to drug use decreases, there is a corresponding increase in number of people using drugs."
That has certainly been the case in Europe. Currently there are more than three dozen major European cities on record against SISs. Most have had such facilities and closed them because they found that drug problems increased, not decreased.

After an injection site was opened in Rotterdam in the early 1990s, the municipal council reported a doubling of the number of 15- to 19-year-olds addicted to heroine or cocaine. Over the 1990s, the Dutch Criminal Intelligence Service reported a 25% increase in drug-related gun murders and robberies in neighbourhoods housing one of that country's 50 official methadone clinics or addict shelters. Zurich closed its infamous needle park in 1992, after the police and citizenry became fed up with public urination and defecation, prostitution, open sex, panhandling, drug peddling, loud fights and violent crimes.

Since word of the Tories' new strategy began to leak out of Ottawa, the well-meaning people who work at Insite have stepped up their campaign to save their facility, which Ottawa has said must close this fall. We sympathize with these supporters. No doubt, they have genuine concern for their charges, who are troubled souls caught in a downward spiral of abuse, crime, disease and pain.

But as much as we admire the good intentions behind SISs, drug consumption is the wrong business for government to be in. A government that funds safe havens for injecting illegal drugs on one hand will quickly find it is working against its efforts to reduce drug dealing on the other.

© National Post 2007

School Daze, Part LCMVCCM

You can always count on school boards from Das Hinterlandt (Chilliwak-Mission-Abbortsford) to do the ugly thing.

The latest is to punish a child for a political argument the board is having with the boy's mother.

Kids are all going on a field trip to The Big Smoke. Highlights will include the Museum of Anthropology, the planetarium and the aquarium. That's 3 good ums in our book.

But mom refuses to pay the fee. She has the money, but it's a belief thing, a political principal.

Fine, OK. So duke it out with Mom already and leave the kid alone.

No, that would be too Solomonic, too sensible. Instead, let's make the little kid's life a misery, boot him off the bus and get back at Mom that way.

I've heard of hiding behind mother's skirts, but hiding behind Johnny's sneakers?

Thus, we have added to our list of oxymorons (Catholic University, happy marriage, military intelligence, Liquor Control Board) this: "Chilliwack Education."

Guest Blogger takes on The Nutty Mayor

Remember Chauncey Gardner. He was the simple minded soul played magnificently by Peter Sellers in the movie "Being There" from a book of the same name.

Chauncey, a humble gardener, accidently became a national celebrity and seer by mumbling such inanities as " We have Spring and Fall, then we have Winter, then it is Spring again". Politicians and journalists would rapturously probe the deep meanings of Chauncey's pronouncements. It was a splendid satire on celebrity, politics and media.

Chauncey lives here in Vancouver.

His name is Sam Sullivan.

His most banal pronouncements on drugs, city planning and economics, that range from simplistic to outright stupid to dangerous, are reverently reported by a fawning media. It proves the old adage that states " media are like puppies, excitable, poorly trained and they suck up to authority".

But whereas Chauncey was an innocent ingenue, Sullivan is a sinister, bitter man. His delusional theories and pathologically inflated ego will leave a legacy of pain on this city. His blatant attempts to turn the Mayor's office into a presidency ( State of the City Address my royal purple ass) goes unchallenged by most of the media.

As Truman once said of a political rival " He's a stupid man, but he's not a nice stupid man".

The Boulevardier

Whose Cousin Owns the Biometrics Lab?

A dentist I used to visit had a sign on the front desk. The sign said,

"PLEASE LEAVE A DEPOSIT."

I told the receptionist that we had a wonderful dog, Ralph, a Samoyed, and that the next time I came in, I'd be happy to bring Ralph, who was always so accommodating. He'd leave a deposit, alright.

This Life Peak Experience comes to mind when I read in the morning paper that soon we will have to carry DNA, biometrics or "other biological identifiers" to go shopping in Bellingham.

My response to this highly effective and sensible new initiative from America's Homeland Security Toy Factory is that I would be happy to DUMP SOME DNA IN THEIR LAPS.

I now join the millions of Western democrats world-wide who mutter into our beer, "The terrorists are winning..."

While grannies and academics and sports teams are having their eyes poked out by cheesy, ineffective laser beams at airports and bus depots along the Canada and Mexico borders, real, actual, lunatic, madmen terrorists are quietly embedded in local culture, eating Royales, watching ball games and waiting for their moment to explode.

Whose cousin owns the biometrics franchise? Is it a Carlyle Group subsidiary? Halliburton? Cheney's nephew?

Survey Said...

The Sunday Survey will now to removed; but, oddly enough, it will re-emerge with different content, next Sunday. Our respondents were consistent: 25% said Sunday is best for making love; 25% said it was best for making lazy circles in the sky and 50% said it was great for everything.

Our DOPE survey will stay on the blog (to your right) for a few more days. Take it - you'll like it!

John Legend - PDA live at Royal Albert Hall

We're going to see John Legend this evening at The Centre, so I thought a little preview wouldn't hoit...

Good News First

The doctor prescribed two medications.

I paid the Safeway pharmacy $93.36 for the two, took them home, read the patient info sheets and was sufficiently horrified. The list of possible side effects, which went on for pages, included losing your dick and being trapped in a small cell with Ryan Seacrest for the rest of your life.

I went back to the doctor.

He agreed that this treatment was optional.

I went back to the Safeway pharmacy. They agreed that they could take the medications back because I hadn't opened either of the packages and the pills were all secured in blister packs.

Did I have the bill?

Mysteriously, I did not. Where the hell was it? I tore the house apart. No luck.

Meanwhile Louise, the head Pharmacist at Safeway, had already assured me that even if I couldn't find my bill, she would re-imburse me. How kind and generous is that!!!

Yesterday I went into the doctor's office and asked the nurse/receptionist if she had found the bill. She got my file and searched for it. No luck.

I was maybe 20 feet along the street when the nurse came flying out after me.

"Mr. Berner, Mr. Berner. I found it!"

Thus, the story ends well. Money returned, bill on hand for verification.

But much praise and thanks to both the nurse for her diligence and especially to Louise at Safeway for resolving this tiny, human problem so graciously.

Emperor's Clothes

How can we take the new "Green" initiatives seriously when everything in the marketplace denies the need?

Example.

This morning's paper comes with an 8-page, 4-color, high-gloss flyer from Chrysler.

I counted 28 vehicles on display. Not one of these monstrosities is a compact or hybrid or fuel efficient machine. They are all huge, gas-guzzling, polluting muscle trucks, SUVs and the like.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Clearly we don't believe for a moment in the necessity of conservation and sustainability.

The preacher at the pulpit is drinking and fornicating in the back room. Not news, I realize.

The New Mothers

An idiot leaves her baby alone in a parked car in Kits and goes shopping. Ditz in Kits.

Firefighters arrive and the woman is "warned" by the police.

Why not charge her with criminal negligence? Because we don't want to fill up our jails? Because we don't want to deprive the child of such a caring, thoughtful parent?

Last summer, I was in the middle of exactly this situation.

Spotting an infant alone in a van, I called 911.

About 5 minutes later, as I waited for the police, the "mother" stepped out of a tanning salon. When the police arrived, one officer stood with me and one with the lovely mother. Apparently, the officer with the mother thought I was as funny as the mother did. Apparently, I was a busy-body old fool minding other people's business. Apparently, leaving an infant alone in a van is a sit-com. Who knew?

How is this any different from the cardiologist and his G.P. wife who left their 3 children under the age of 4 to go have a quiet romantic dinner while on vacation in Portugal?

Why not just dump your babies face-down in public toilets? That's being done too, so it must be alright.

You're A Perv, But you are OUR Perv.

Professional "Colleges" are a scourge.

I speak of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, the College of Nurses and the College of Teachers, each of which has proven time and again to be most interested in maintaining the status quo at all costs. They pull up the drawbridge, fill the moat with more alligators and tell the world to mind its own business.

The only problem is...their business is our business.

And when these self-protecting, secretive cabals keep good doctors, nurse and teachers who have immigrated to Canada from working, they are harming all of us.

And when they fail to discipline or rout the miscreants and dogs in their midst, they again harm all of us.

The case of the nutty sex perv who has been teaching teen-age girls in Abbotsford, Chilliwak and Mission is a prime example.

The fool has been flagged time and again since 1995 for "inappropriate" behaviour, warned by various school boards, slapped on his very long, inquisitive wrists, but the College of teachers has never had the guts to step up to the plate and say, "Sir, what you do is not permitted in our midst. Goodbye, sayonara, auf vederzein, ciao, take a hike."

They claim the fault here was "an administrative error."

These groups always have that kind of claim.

New legislation should - and it does not - include a closer and more open relationship with the Colleges. They might try coming out of the Dark Ages and into the light.

The Unroyal Dismounted Muddied Police

What a sad spectacle our national police have become.

Underfunded, undermanned, asked to cover millions of acres of parks when they can't get their cars started in suburbia.

Daily now are the revelations of incompetence, bungling, collusion, cover-ups.

Now, this atrocity in Smalltown, BC. A young, inexperienced officer shoots a prisoner in the back of the head. The prisoner's crime is that he had a beer at a hockey game.

We don't know how all this went down; we weren't there. But apparently the officers and other officials who were there, weren't entirely there either.

The body of the shot young man was allowed to sit and decompose in the detachment office for 2 days before it was finally delivered - in an unrefrigerated vehicle - to the pathologist for an autopsy. Further, the pathologist's work was shoddy at best, negligent if truth be told.

What are we to do? How will Canada ever regain self-respect and self-confidence in this once proud organization? Throw more green at the red and blue?

Where is the leadership?

Bob Dylan - I want you

Why not 3 songs? Did I mention it's his birthday?

Bob Dylan - Maggies Farm (Live)

Hey...It's his birthday!

Canada in Flight - A Charming Story

ITEM: From the morning paper: "A former Air Canada cleaner says security was so lax at Toronto's Pearson International Airport on the day of the Air India bombing in 1985 that he wandered undetected around the doomed airplane for 10 minutes - even sitting down in the cockpit - in the hours before takeoff from Toronto."

ITEM: From the morning paper: "A Canadian pilot, who was once rejected by the Canadian forces, was honored Wednesday by the Queen and the Royal Air Force with a medal for bravery under fire in Afghanistan."

These comedy/horror shows cannot be written. Only real life works this devilishly well.

How Insane Can Religion Be if You Give It Half a Chance and Half a Brain?

The Pope in a speech in Brazil declared recently, "Christ was the Saviour America's Natives silently yearned for."

He thus alienated several millions of God's children, who happen to not share his persuasions.

How did he know this? Could we get the address book of his email?

Says Who? The Drug Drek Continues

The National Post has a major, front page story today headlined "Tories to Shun Safe Drug Sites."



Almost everything in the details of this article is either flat wrong or wrong-headed.



First, the paper reports that the federal government will now allocate a new $64 Million over two years for treatment, enforcement and prevention. As Harm reduction is not mentioned, everyone and his dog who has been sucking at the harm reduction tit for the last umpteen years is freaking out. One such fool who works in HIV-AIDS cries, "There is is no money for harm reduction, which is quite ominous..."



Well, it's not ominous at all. First, there are already millions of dollars allocated for harm reduction and that waste will continue. Second, harm reduction is ALL that has been funded until now, so stop your whining. And third, harm reduction has accomplished nothing other than more harm.



Then it is reported that drug treatment could get $32 Million, including money for research aimed at treating crystal meth addicts.



There are two things wrong with this little gem. First, $32 Million for treatment - when there has been ZERO money for treatment for 30 years is a pea in the pissoir. It is just short of next to the shadow of a whisper of nothing. Second, we don't need to spend more money on research on any addictions. We have had all the answers staring us in the face for 50 years or more now. All we need is the courage and then political will to get to work. And third, money assigned for treatment should go, oddly enough - wouldn't you think? - to treatment not to research, which is not treatment it is research.



Finally, the article claims that we already spend in Canada $385 Million a year on treatment, prevention and harm reduction. THIS IS NOT SO. If we spend that money, where may I ask are the BEDS??? Where are all the treatment centres that families are quickly turning to in desperation? Where?



This subject is maddening for all the lies, stupidity, misinformation, opinionation based on intellectual masturbation and claims made by people who have accomplished nothing in terms of saving lives, but much in building handsome little empires funded by tax dollars.

T-t-t-timing is ever, everything...

Just a question...why is the National Post running excerpts from a book by Conrad Black about Richard Nixon? Why now? To cash in on Mr. Blacks' current notoriety, as h stands before a Chicago court and the world press?

Can we call this tacky? Can we say we don't care to read the stuff?

Counter Intelligence

The fact that the Anti-Poverty Committee are goons is not up for debate.

They debase the idea of protest by adding the elements of violence, destruction and personal attacks. And they discredit those of us who have been immune to or against the hysteria of good cheer for the Olympics from the beginning. Many thousands of British Columbians could care less about this expenditure of almost $2 Billion and the secrecy in which the spending is shrouded. Many of us would rather put tax money to work on health, schools, roads, police. But we aren't smashing fax machines or stalking private citizens to their homes.

What makes the APC interesting - while still disgusting and counterproductive - is that they are like you and me and most of this juvenile, adolescent culture we call Canada.

This is the only city in the world where drivers either don't understand or willfully ignore traffic circles - even police cars! If a building has a NO PARKING sign painted on its side, you can bet a fleet of middle-aged rebels will be stationed below it. People regularly walk across red lights and expect drivers to be ware of them. Fifty year old men and women wear "distressed" jeans - the only thing about them, being how distressed we are to have to bear witness to this embarrassment. The Pirate Syndrome, a new category of psychological disturbance that I have invented, was in full flight again at the end of this moribund hockey season, school teachers and bank clerks aflutter with the flapping of their Canucks flags against the side windows of their Toyota Camrys. Yeah, Yeah, Johnny Reb. Yawn...

The APC are hooligans and bums looking for a brawl. A shame, because there is much to protest about this bread and circuses fiasco called 2010. But pouring water on the secretary's blackberry won't cut it. The APC is the best PR campaign the Vanoc could hope for.

The King And I - Shall We Dance

And speaking of little lost treasures...here is the voice of Seattle's Marni Nixon, who also sang for Audrey Hepburn in "My Fair Lady," and Natalie Wood in "West Side Story,' so seamlessly in each case that one never suspected it wasn't Deborah Kerr or Audrey or Natalie singing. I saw Yul Brynner do this role on stage here in Vancouver, when he was suffering from cancer. You would never know it. He was beyond magnificent.

Gordon Macrae

Here's one of the great songs sung by one of the great singers. NO accident that he was the star of both "Oklahoma" and "Carousel" from which this song is taken.