The operating license for the safe injection site in Vancouver has been extended to June 2008. The director of the site said that people who come to the site are more likely to go into drug detox than those who don’t come to the site. Logical, since someone is talking to them about it. But she’s not saying how many heroin addicts that amounts to, and you’d think she’d be screaming it from the rooftops since she’s trying to save her clinic. Shouldn’t that be the goal of any ‘drug treatment’ program? To get people into drug detox and drug rehab so they can get off drugs?
And how many of Vancouver’s 12,000 injection drug users are actually coming to the site? And how much is it costing the city? And how else could that money be used to actually get people off drugs through drug detox and drug rehab program? How effective are they at ending heroin addiction?
These are the questions being asked by Canada’s Prime Minister. He’s cracking down on drug use – approving an exemption to the law making heroin illegal and providing a place for people to shoot up doesn’t seem to be the way to do it. He’s having a problem with that. And, frankly, I don’t blame him. Unless the safe injection site can show that they’re really getting people into a drug detox program and drug rehab in substantial numbers, the money would be better spent on initiatives that do accomplish that.