Prohibition Is the Only Stable Drug Policy
Canada’s conservative government has until June 30th to continue permitting a safe injection facility for intravenous drug users. The benefits of the program are plain as day—lowered rates of disease transmission, fewer overdoses, regular contact between addicts and medical services—but the evidence is taking a backseat to morality.
Scientific evidence alone will not determine the fate of Vancouver’s supervised injection site, an undersecretary to Health Minister Tony Clement said Friday.
Winnipeg MP Steven Fletcher said his Conservative government will make a “rational and thoughtful decision based on science” when it comes to extending or ending a federal exemption for Insite, North America’s only such program.
But Fletcher told The Canadian Press the science is conflicting, so Clement will have to assess what Fletcher calls the “realities of the situation.”
Peer-reviewed studies have suggested the program minimizes harm to addicts, reduces the spread of disease and directs addicts toward rehabilitation programs while reducing emergency health-care and law enforcement budgets.
But opponents say allowing people to inject illegal opiates under supervision promotes drug use by facilitating addiction.
The current exemption expires June 30, when Clement must decide whether to grant another exemption to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act or amend legislation that prohibits it.
It goes without saying that Clement’s head is shoved up so far up his ass that his sphincter is clenching his windpipes. But, Clement’s shitty outlook aside, the very fact that good drug reforms can occur and the science can justify it, yet, still, asses like Clement can have a sway for “morality” is a discouraging reminder: Drug policy has nothing to do with logic, but an age-old battle over deciding what people can do with their bodies. Even if US drug policies shift completely, it will take vigilance to uphold them on the slippery shit-coated paternal slope. (This is like the vigilance to maintain civil liberties in a complex and free society, rather than the easy-to-understand government of law and order.) As long as the a moralistic argument can be made to simpletons that we are letting people sin, the laws will be in flux. Prohibition, rather, is the only stable drug policy. Like the state of depression, prohibition is a known variable—like a teenager wallowing in sadness and failure. It is the safety of feeling sorry for oneself. It is a mental state that deserves neither sympathy nor mercy.