Canada's Conservative minority government has some odd policies based more on belief than reality. Health Minister, Tony Clement, unveiled yet another yesterday at the 17th International AIDS Conference in Mexico City.
“Allowing and/or encouraging people to inject heroin into their veins is not harm reduction, it is the opposite. … We believe it is a form of harm addition,” Tony Clement said Tuesday in Mexico City"Mr. Clement spoke in opposition to the World health Organisation's (WHO) advocacy of "safe injection" sites, like the InSite operating in Vancouver on Canada's west coast. Under the policy, injecting drug users can safely inject themselves in a supervised environment without fear of arrest by authorities or harassment by other drug users or the people who prey on them. The intention is to reach out to the most marginalised drug users and encourage them to become known and to enter rehab and to educate them about keeping themselves safe. The overall goal is harm reduction - in particular restricting the spread of HIV/AIDS.
The Canadian government (the WHO's largest funder) is OK with needle swaps and methadone and other aspects of the policy recommendations, but sees providing a safe place for them to actually be used as "condoning" illegal drug use.
WHO officials maintained their strong support for safe sites. Teguest Guerma, associate director of the HIV-AIDS department at the WHO, said:
“The WHO supports harm reduction....including all interventions that benefit injecting drug users."HIV/AIDS isn't as judgmental as Mr. Clement and his government. It will infect anyone whether you approve of it or not. To stop the spread you have to reach the people on the very edge who remain most vulnerable and who represent an ongoing repository for enabling active HIV/AIDS infection. You can't reach them if you won't do what it takes to do the job for extraneous 'moral' or political reasons. Where is the morality in allowing HIV to continue to fester among those you refuse to "condone"?
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