Dominic Holden

Sister VixXxen’s shoes at the medical-marijuana rally today.

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.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was outside a house on north Capitol Hill last night.

The eyes look pensive and concerned.

Brooklyn Park police were looking for a meth lab, but they found a fish tank and the chemicals needed to maintain it.

And a few hours later, when the city sent a contractor to fix the door the police had smashed open Monday afternoon, it was obvious the city was trying to fix a mistake. It happened while Kathy Adams was sleeping. “And the next thing I know, a police officer is trying to get me out bed,” she said.

Adams, a 54-year-old former nurse who said she suffers from a bad back caused by a patient who attacked her a few years ago, was handcuffed. So was her 49-year-old husband. “They brought us here and said once we clear that area, you can sit down and you will not speak to each other,” she said.

Police were executing a search warrant signed by Hennepin County Judge Ivy Bernhardson, who believed there was probable cause the Adams’s home was a meth lab.

“From a cursory view, it doesn’t look like our officers did anything wrong,” said Capt. Greg Roehl. Roehl said the drug task force was acting on a tip from a subcontractor for CenterPoint Energy, who had been in the home Friday to install a hot water heater.

“He got hit with a chemical smell that he said made him light headed, feel kind of nauseous,” Roehl said. The smell was vinegar, and maybe pickling lime, which were clearly marked in a bathroom Mr. Adams uses to mix chemicals for his salt water fish tank.

This story has a happy ending—the city came and fixed the door! So what’s the problem? Adams could have easily heard the intruders and pulled a gun, not knowing they were cops. Then she or the cops could have shot, as happens often in these raids, and someone would end up dead. For a fish tank, or a maple tree, or even an actual pot plant or meth rock.