Aftermath of a decade of no prohibitions

"Harm reduction" advocates target addicts and critics  

Supervised injection site epitomizes warped philosophy in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside
  By Mark Hasiuk, Vancouver Courier, Sept. 15, 2010
In the year 2000, mayor Philip Owen introduced his Four Pillars drug strategy aimed at widespread drug addiction in the Downtown Eastside. The results have been disastrous. Addiction has flourished.

Homelessness has doubled. Blessed with official sanction, the drug culture grows.

Owen left office in 2002, leaving behind a broken neighbourhood. Now a "harm reduction" celebrity, he travels the world attending drug policy conferences in the United States, Europe and Asia. And in 2008, he was named to the Order of Canada, ending any speculation about that institution's relationship with reality.

Meanwhile, back in the Downtown Eastside, a small band of true believers took Owen's cue and mobilized forces--in plain view of a pathetic media--to experiment on neighbourhood residents. In 2003, Insite, the supervised injection site at 139 East Hastings, opened for business. In 2005, at nearby 84 West Hastings, the NAOMI study staged North America's first government-sponsored heroin giveaway. Sometime soon at the same location, hundreds of addicts will receive up to three daily doses of high-grade pharmaceutical heroin as part of the four-year SALOME study.

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But not everyone's on board.

"The best thing you can say about harm reduction advocates is that they are reductionists--they are reducing a complex human problem to a simple thing," said David Berner, the newly appointed executive director of the Drug Prevention Network of Canada, an abstinence-based organization (soon-to-be headquartered in Vancouver) founded by former Conservative MP Randy White. "We need to get money and human energy back into prevention, education and treatment."

Berner, a longtime broadcaster and writer, recently finished a book about the X-Kalay Foundation Society, a residential treatment centre for drug addicts and alcoholics he founded in 1967.

While the details are too varied for a single newspaper column, the philosophical difference between harm reduction and abstinence-based treatment is obvious. According to Berner, Insite organizers flirt with the surreal when boasting about "directing addicts" into treatment. "You cannot get involved with treatment with an addict who just shot up," said Berner. "You can't talk to someone who just shot up. So the claim they make, that they're getting people into treatment, is absurd."

But criticizing Insite can come with a price. In the high stakes world of harm reduction, where government grants provide vital lifeblood, reputations are brutally defended. Critics targeted and bullied.

Just ask Colin Mangham.

Last September, the Portland Hotel Society, co-operators of Insite, slapped a defamation and slander lawsuit on Mangham, a 60-year-old research scientist and addictions expert whose 2007 RCMP-funded report published in the Journal of Global Drug Policy and Practice questioned the findings of Insite researchers. "Statements made about improving public order, saving lives and getting people into detox are misleading and based on data that just isn't there," said Mangham, during a recent phone interview from his home in Langley. (To read the report, google Mangham, Insite.)

Mangham, who owns a PhD in school and community health, spent his career compiling and analyzing health and addiction data, as a private contractor for governments and as a professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax. His impressive resume apparently threatened Insite's holy trinity of researchers--Thomas Kerr, Julio Montaner and Evan Wood who are known worldwide as drug legalization advocates, a fact Mangham wishes more people recognized.

"Yet they claim that they're objective scientists only interested in the facts, and that I and the RCMP and the Harper government and anybody who criticizes them are ideologues. That's hypocrisy," said Mangham. "They are political activists."

Insite research is massaged, he adds, to prove predetermined outcomes. The familiar defense, that Insite studies are peer reviewed, means little to seasoned researchers like Mangham. "It's very common in research, in fact it's problematic in every field, especially in health and areas of human behaviour and addictions, that research is published that isn't very strong," he said. "That fact is usually mentioned during the second day of any statistics or methodology course."

The lawsuit remains in limbo, dependent on Insite's next move. It weighs heavy on Mangham and has perhaps irreparably damaged his professional reputation. "They have sought to affect my credibility and that has hurt me financially," said Mangham, whose wife is undergoing chemotherapy and is unable to work regularly. "We've built up a huge line of credit that essentially may be insurmountable. I've basically went a year without much income because of all this."

Ten years in, Vancouver's great harm reduction experiment keeps rolling along, leaving rows of victims in its wake. Addicts get sicker, critics assailed, while an entire neighbourhood rots from the inside out.

Wonder if this is what Philip Owen had in mind?  (Below are letters in response to this article)

mhasiuk@vancourier.com              © Copyright (c) Vancouver Courier

http://www.vancourier.com/Harm+reduction+advocates+target+addicts+critics/3528207/story.html

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Letters to the Editor 
Vancouver Courier, September 22, 2010

Through a street cop's own eyes and knowledge

To the editor:

Re: "Harm reduction advocates target addicts and critics," Sept. 15.

Just wanted to send you a short note to compliment Mark Hasiuk's column, which paints a very accurate account of what's happened in our city since this well-intended but misguided Four Pillars strategy was introduced. It's very nice to see this perspective and some balance brought to this issue.

Unfortunately, too many in media have bought into the harm reduction-only focus on our very serious drug issues in this city, and while they all pat themselves on the back about how non-judgmental and compassionate they are, lives continue to be destroyed and the Downtown Eastside continues to crumble.

I can tell you as someone who works in the Downtown Eastside, I have not seen one bit of a difference down there over these last 10 years. We continue to commit a disproportionate amount of our police resources in that neighbourhood.

Tom Stamatakis,
president, Vancouver Police Union
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A pastor eyewitnesses the real street truth 

To the editor:

Thanks to Mark Hasiuk for reminding us of the inconvenient truth about harm reduction. In over six years of ministry in the Downtown Eastside, I have seen the general situation grow steadily worse.

My reason for being philosophically opposed to the concept is Scriptural: Jesus Christ, whom I preach, is about harm elimination, not harm reduction. I look at the fruits--the transformation and positive changes that I've seen in people coming to Gospel Mission and The Lord's Rain (our street-level showers ministry and outreach or "draw-in") proves the value of ministering God's love and grace, coupled with the hope and the knowledge that they're not just capable of a turnaround but entitled to one. God bless.

Drew Snider, asst. pastor, Gospel Mission/The Lord's Rain

 
© Copyright (c) Vancouver Courier

Source: 
http://www.vancourier.com/Media+misguided+about+harm+reduction/3561579/story.html

http://www.vancourier.com/opinion/Media+misguided+about+harm+reduction/3561580/story.html