[Newsbot]

Filibuster Cartoons
Title: Syringed in the back (click to view)
Date: October 1, 2011
Prime Minister Stephen Harper was dealt a massive blow in his anti-drug crusade yesterday after the Supreme Court of Canada ruled unanimously that Vancouver’s famous “Insite” safe injection clinic could not be shut down without violating the Constitution. Harper’s government had previously been arguing that the clinic — which provides clean needles to downtown junkies as a way of preventing the spread of disease — undermine’s Canada’s drug laws by embracing a double standard of tolerance: shooting heroin is fine so long as you're already addicted.

The Supreme Court, in contrast, held that denying addicts clean needles blatantly endangered their health, and by moving to shut down Insite the government was “arbitrarily” infringing on the junkies’ right not be deprived of “life, liberty and security of the person” as protected by Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. If the government could make a compelling case that the infringement was necessary to prevent some greater social ill, said the Court, then maybe the shutdown would be justified. But instead they concluded just the opposite, declaring the facility’s operations have had “no discernible negative impact on the public safety and health objectives of Canada.”

The fact that the ruling was unanimous was no doubt doubley insulting to the Prime Minister, since it revealed that neither of the two justices he personally appointed, Justice Thomas Albert Cromwell and Justice Marshall Rothstein, were willing to side with either his government or philosophy when push came to shove.

Now obviously it's incredibly intellectually lazy and corrupt to expect judges appointed by a sitting government to always blindly side with that government. The whole reason judges have such long terms in the first place is precisely to grant them sufficient independence from the politicians who select them, and allow them freedom to issue honest rulings without fear of partisan reprisal whenever political orthodoxies are disrupted. Yet it seems an opposite extreme is also possible, and equally troubling.

The Supreme Court of Canada issues an awful lot of unanimous rulings these days. Of its last few major rulings — R v. National Post on protecting media sources, AttorneyGeneral v. Mavi on collecting debt from deadbeat immigrant "sponsors," Beckman v. Little Salmon on interpreting Native treaties, and the reference on the constitutionality of federal securities regulator — all were unanimous, despite the fact that these were undeniably controversial cases regarding matters about which there was no shortage of diverse opinion across the country. Like Insite.

The entire Insite ruling, in fact, evokes one of the most famously polarizing legal debates of all time: the old "freedom from" versus "freedom to" dichotomy. In the Court's opinion, Vancouver's drug addicts have a freedom to use Insite's facilities, a belief which enshrines the principle that access to health care is always guaranteed, even in cases where the "treatment" for one's sickness will merely perpetuate that same illness. No one, not even the conservative judges, supported the government's contrary case that the public's right to freedom from the negative effects of legalized hard drug use — or a community that tolerates their use — was equally valid, though this is certainly an argument you hear constantly in Vancouver newspapers, talk radio shows, blogs, and Internet forums. It's hardly a way-out-there position, in other words.

In my experience, drug legalization is an issue that seems to skim the elite from the masses. Certainly this was the case in Vancouver, where the leadership of both our leading provincial parties, the NDP and the Liberals, all living former mayors of the city, and countless high-profile representatives of the British Columbia academic and legal establishment, endorsed the Insite facility. Though it would be nice to believe such civic glitterati came to their conclusion solely as a result of their large, ultra-rationalist, educated brains, it can't be denied that the issue has become something of a social signifier in recent years. Decrying the "failed drug war" is the expected conclusion of anyone carrying the pretence of a thoughtful, urbane, modernist, and the idolization of some European utopia, where the drugs are all legalized and all crime has ceased, the expected motivation. It all stems from some larger place of progressive alienation with the culture of "law and order as usual" in this country, and an often visceral dislike or fear of things like cops and prisons, which are seen to be so... unsophisticated. Questions like why we have drug users in the first place, or how we can get their numbers down, are rarely asked in this context.

Canada's legal establishment has long been denounced by conservatives, and even some liberals, for moving in an ever-more cliquey, cloistered, and groupthink-oriented direction. Because our country is small, and thus only dominated by a few "good" law schools, it's become far too easy to establish a legal orthodoxy, and far too difficult to come up with unique answers to big legal questions — such as, what the Constitution means — without coming off as a fringe weirdo. There is no Canadian equivalent of something like the US Federalist Society, which champions the traditionalist legal philosophy of a limited (rather than "living") constitution, nor does the Canadian system of judicial appointments allow the philosophies of prospective judges to be in any way scrutinized by a broad base of democratic representatives, on behalf of the broad base of Canadian public opinion.

The fact that even Stephen Harper, our supposedly most dogmatically ideological of prime ministers, was unable to appoint even a single reliably anti-progressive orthodoxy judge to Canada's highest court should be troubling to anyone who values the idea of a diverse and open-minded judiciary. You don't have to believe the Court needs more conservatives to see the value of having dissent within its ranks.

[Psudo]

If the court is unanimous because the law is clear, great.

If the court is unanimous because the law has a gap but the moral answer is clear, good.

If the court is split because the law and morality are both unclear, fine.

If the court is unanimous despite unclear law and morality, there's a serious problem.

The morality of needle sharing is in dispute, but what are the legal precedents at issue?

[Proculation]

I don't really have an issue with accepting clinics like Insite. I just hope they don't use public money to do so. We should not have to pay for the bad choices that some people made.

[andyt]

Proculation wrote:

I don't really have an issue with accepting clinics like Insite. I just hope they don't use public money to do so. We should not have to pay for the bad choices that some people made.

You pay either way. You pay less with harm reduction, is all. There is no way to isolate an interdependent society from bad choices some people make. Look at what happened when the financiers made bad choices, and look at who paid for that. Guess we need a harm reduction approach to capitalism as well.

[Psudo]

andyt wrote:

we need a harm reduction approach to capitalism as well.

The question isn't whether there should be harm reduction at all (at least, not in mainstream discourse), but how much and which programs work best.

That said, I've heard the argument "We should allow adoption because unwanted children often grow up into troubled and lawless adults." That same (lousy) reasoning could be applied against drug addicts -- we should let addicts die so that there are fewer troubled and lawless adults. The distinction needs to be made between reducing the population generally and reducing the crap they endure. In the choice between ending lives and fixing lives, I prefer the fixing. Only if and when they refuse to be fixed does it make any sense to reconsider.

Giving druggies clean needles doesn't fix anything. At most, it limits future damage, like a parachute slows a fall. With more time to reconsider maybe they're more likely to, but it doesn't cause them to reconsider and it doesn't keep them from hitting bottom.

It's not a social welfare vs. Randian capitalism issue, either. A similar institution could be operated for-profit or as a private charity. The issues in question are whether providing clean needles to obvious addicts is the same as enabling addiction and whether that is (or deserves to be) illegal.

I think maybe it should be illegal, but that's a question for legislatures. The courts should answer whether it is illegal, and they did (on jurisdictional grounds, not the alleged value of the program). I just wish I had a little more insight (heh heh) into their reasoning. Is it really illegal for the federal government to not renew a license?

[andyt]

Insite is a tine piece of the 4 pillars approach. That it gets this much attention shows just how bereft we are of sound drug policy that is true harm reduction - to society. But it's cheap, pays for itself and makes people feel they're doing something. That this little program had to go all the way to the supreme court is ridiculous.

If you can show a way for a program like Insite to be run as a private, money making operation, well, there's a lot of people who would love to hear from you.

My point about greedhogs was about the bad choices people make and how we as a society pays for them. Compared to addicts, the greed addicts of Wall St made and continue to make some really bad choices, that cost society way more than the druggies.

[Psudo]

andyt wrote:

If you can show a way for a program like Insite to be run as a private, money making operation, well, there's a lot of people who would love to hear from you.

Uh... do the same thing, but charge for it? Sometimes druggies have money to pay for it, sometimes their loved ones do, and sometimes private donations can cover such costs. Heck, a vending machine that dispenses clean needles for a loonie could do half of what they do for profit.

Pillars 1, 2, and 4 are good ideas, but I don't see how the third (the part where you take consequences of individual choices away from the individual and put them on society generally, much like the origins of the Wall Street collapse) can be said to reduce addiction rates.

[Freakinoldguy]

andyt wrote:

Insite is a tine piece of the 4 pillars approach. That it gets this much attention shows just how bereft we are of sound drug policy that is true harm reduction - to society. But it's cheap, pays for itself and makes people feel they're doing something. That this little program had to go all the way to the supreme court is ridiculous.

Where are the other three pieces of this grand 4 pillar approach stategy?

It seems to me the 4 pillar approach was always smoke and mirrors used to ensure that insite kept operating because it was supposedly part of a much larger and more cohesive plan to end the drug problem.

But all that appears to have happened is that the junkies keep shooting up albiet in better surroundings, the dealers keep getting richer, our beloved social engineers feel good about themselves at night and the rest of us can just suck it up and pay for it.

WTF good is giving a junkie a place to shoot up doing other than keeping him alive to enjoy his own personal piece of living hell. They need help and unless we give it to them forcibly or not all the insites in the world aren't gonna fix this problem.

[PublicAnimalNo9]

Freakinoldguy wrote:

andyt wrote:

Insite is a tine piece of the 4 pillars approach. That it gets this much attention shows just how bereft we are of sound drug policy that is true harm reduction - to society. But it's cheap, pays for itself and makes people feel they're doing something. That this little program had to go all the way to the supreme court is ridiculous.

Where are the other three pieces of this grand 4 pillar approach stategy?

It seems to me the 4 pillar approach was always smoke and mirrors used to ensure that insite kept operating because it was supposedly part of a much larger and more cohesive plan to end the drug problem.

But all that appears to have happened is that the junkies keep shooting up albiet in better surroundings, the dealers keep getting richer, our beloved social engineers feel good about themselves at night and the rest of us can just suck it up and pay for it.

WTF good is giving a junkie a place to shoot up doing other than keeping him alive to enjoy his own personal piece of living hell. They need help and unless we give it to them forcibly or not all the insites in the world aren't gonna fix this problem.

Short answer; Decrim but don't fully legalize hard drugs. Here's what Portugal does, upon getting "busted" the individual in quesiton goes before a board that decides on whether to hand out jail time, send them to rehab, or do nothing at all. Rarely if ever do end users end up in jail/prison for simple possession.
Sending a junkie to prison ain't going to help them either, there's no shortage of drugs there.
Giving junkies a safe place to shoot up is also about help. IF they feel safe there, they'll feel it's a safe place to go for help when they finally want to raise themselves out of their personal hell. Many junkies remain so because they just don't know where to go for help or even where to start asking. Unfortunately, most of them gotta hit about 3 levels below rock bottom before they finally wake up. Giving them a safe place gives them a better chance of living long enough to hopefully make the smart decision.

[Freakinoldguy]

PublicAnimalNo9 wrote:

Freakinoldguy wrote:

andyt wrote:

Insite is a tine piece of the 4 pillars approach. That it gets this much attention shows just how bereft we are of sound drug policy that is true harm reduction - to society. But it's cheap, pays for itself and makes people feel they're doing something. That this little program had to go all the way to the supreme court is ridiculous.

Where are the other three pieces of this grand 4 pillar approach stategy?

It seems to me the 4 pillar approach was always smoke and mirrors used to ensure that insite kept operating because it was supposedly part of a much larger and more cohesive plan to end the drug problem.

But all that appears to have happened is that the junkies keep shooting up albiet in better surroundings, the dealers keep getting richer, our beloved social engineers feel good about themselves at night and the rest of us can just suck it up and pay for it.

WTF good is giving a junkie a place to shoot up doing other than keeping him alive to enjoy his own personal piece of living hell. They need help and unless we give it to them forcibly or not all the insites in the world aren't gonna fix this problem.

Short answer; Decrim but don't fully legalize hard drugs. Here's what Portugal does, upon getting "busted" the individual in quesiton goes before a board that decides on whether to hand out jail time, send them to rehab, or do nothing at all. Rarely if ever do end users end up in jail/prison for simple possession.
Sending a junkie to prison ain't going to help them either, there's no shortage of drugs there.
Giving junkies a safe place to shoot up is also about help. IF they feel safe there, they'll feel it's a safe place to go for help when they finally want to raise themselves out of their personal hell. Many junkies remain so because they just don't know where to go for help or even where to start asking. Unfortunately, most of them gotta hit about 3 levels below rock bottom before they finally wake up. Giving them a safe place gives them a better chance of living long enough to hopefully make the smart decision.

I'll agree with you about not sending junkies to prison for simple possesion and I definately like the idea of the courts being able to send them to rehab. The problem I have is money.

Most rational people have noticed that all levels of Government are trying to avoid paying for any of the things needed to rehabilitate this amount of drug addicts. So, if we give the courts the rights to decide what punishment fits the crime, my guess is that finances will come into play and they'll be giving the do nothing sentence more than they should be, just to save a buck.

So, if we're gonna use the Portugese model, maybe we should just drop the do nothing sentence and make the courts put them in rehab, the money be fucked.
Alot of the junkies may not like it but at least some of them would be able to kick the habit and if you're habitual then off to jail and you can do your rehab in there. But no matter what, rehab is the key.

I also realise there's no quick fix to this but the first step has to be helping these people and while insite may keep them alive, the few that do decide to go to rehab likely don't justify it's expense as a intervention clinic just making it a nice safe place to shoot up. I'd rather see my tax dollars going to something that will make a difference rather than something that perpetuates the problem.

[Psudo]

Freakinoldguy wrote:

rehab is the key.

Yes it is.

[dodobird]

Is there not statistical evidence that has been presented that disease is down and rehab admittance up in the community where this facility is located? i believe i remember hearing about it

[andyt]

Freakinoldguy wrote:

andyt wrote:

Insite is a tine piece of the 4 pillars approach. That it gets this much attention shows just how bereft we are of sound drug policy that is true harm reduction - to society. But it's cheap, pays for itself and makes people feel they're doing something. That this little program had to go all the way to the supreme court is ridiculous.

Where are the other three pieces of this grand 4 pillar approach stategy?

It seems to me the 4 pillar approach was always smoke and mirrors used to ensure that insite kept operating because it was supposedly part of a much larger and more cohesive plan to end the drug problem.

But all that appears to have happened is that the junkies keep shooting up albiet in better surroundings, the dealers keep getting richer, our beloved social engineers feel good about themselves at night and the rest of us can just suck it up and pay for it.

WTF good is giving a junkie a place to shoot up doing other than keeping him alive to enjoy his own personal piece of living hell. They need help and unless we give it to them forcibly or not all the insites in the world aren't gonna fix this problem.

We've always had the enforcement pillar - too much. Trying to pry the bucks out of govt for prevention and rehabilitation is much harder than a little storefront clinic.

As has been shown, Insite does help to direct a few people to rehab - except that we have insufficient rehab spaces and so people have to wait for it and fall off the wagon again. Giving a junkie a clean space to shoot up means he's far less likely to contract HIV or hepatitis - that saves us a fortune in medical costs.

Of course we should be giving them more help. Giving it forcibly - most people say it won't work because the person has to be ready to quit, it's not something you can force. Sticking them in jail won't help, because many get addicted in the first place while in jail. No problem getting drugs there.

You're making the same kind of argument you make against legalization. Because it's not a perfect solution you say why bother at all. Well, because doing nothing is even worse.

[DanSC]

Psudo wrote:

Heck, a vending machine that dispenses clean needles for a loonie could do half of what they do for profit.

I support this.

[andyt]

Psudo wrote:

andyt wrote:

If you can show a way for a program like Insite to be run as a private, money making operation, well, there's a lot of people who would love to hear from you.

Uh... do the same thing, but charge for it? Sometimes druggies have money to pay for it, sometimes their loved ones do, and sometimes private donations can cover such costs. Heck, a vending machine that dispenses clean needles for a loonie could do half of what they do for profit.

Pillars 1, 2, and 4 are good ideas, but I don't see how the third (the part where you take consequences of individual choices away from the individual and put them on society generally, much like the origins of the Wall Street collapse) can be said to reduce addiction rates.

Are you sure you thought that needle vending machine idea thru? Sounds pretty dumb to me.

Harm reduction won't ( assume that's what you mean by pillar 3) won't reduce addiction rates, AFAIK. Might even raise them a bit. But it way reduces the costs of that addiction. And the consequences are already born by society, even in the land of the free. What is that blind spot you 'Mericuns have where you think individual actions don't affect your society? You have no drug related crime? No drug related health costs born by the state?