Am Johal
VANCOUVER, Jun 6 2008 (IPS) – The Canadian government has decided to appeal a British Columbia Supreme Court decision allowing North America s first supervised injection site, the facility known as Insite in Vancouver s Downtown Eastside neighbourhood, to remain open without a federal government exemption.
The court case was initiated by the PHS Community Services Society, the operator of Insite with the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, as a result of fears that the Conservative minority government would shut down the site by not signing an exemption under Canada s Controlled Drugs and Substances Act which would have allowed the facility to legally remain open.
Liz Evans, the executive director of PHS Community Services Society, told IPS, It is unclear on what reason the Harper government will base its appeal. Our lawyers never disputed any of the government s evidence during the court proceedings. We accepted that narcotics are both dangerous and illegal. What we argued though was that because of those facts, Insite is a crucial access point to health care and treatment. And the judge agreed.
The site opened in 2002 after a decade-long surge in overdose deaths, HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C infections in the port city. After receiving two subsequent extensions to the exemption, the issue came to a head after Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Health Minister Tony Clement would not give assurances that they would grant an additional exemption after Jun. 30 of this year.
Though there is some dispute within the international system on the legality of supervised injection sites, the U.N. International Drug Control Programme in 2002 did find in a review that, It would be difficult to assert that, in establishing drug-injection rooms, it is the intent of Parties [states] to actually incite or induce the illicit use of drugs, or even more so, to associate with, aid, abet or facilitate the use of drugs.
On the contrary, it seems clear that in such cases the intervention of governments is to provide healthier conditions for IV drug abusers, thereby reducing their risk of injection with grave transmittable diseases and, at least in some cases, reaching out to them with counseling and other options, the review stated. Albeit how insufifficient this may look from a demand reduction point of view, it would still fall far from the intent of committing an offense as foreseen in the 1988 Convention.
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In his BC Supreme Court decision, Justice Ian Pitfield came to the incontrovertible conclusion that the risk of morbidity and mortality associated with addiction and injection can be ameliorated by injection in the presence of qualified health professionals.
Pitfield went on to conclude that the denial of health care is a violation of Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which states that, Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.
In his 59-page landmark decision, Pitfield also wrote, While there is nothing to be said in favour of the injection of controlled substances that leads to addiction, there is much to condition.
Judge Pitfield, in his surprise decision, has given the federal government until June 2009 to amend the country s drug laws.
Monique Pongracic-Speier, who argued the case for Insite as a volunteer lawyer, told Canadian newspapers, It is an important affirmation that in Canada we do have a right to receive treatment that will help addicted individuals deal with the effects of their be said against denying health care services that will ameliorate the effects of their addiction and to receive treatment that will promote recovery. A court in this country has not been called upon to look at injection drug use from a human rights point of view. That said, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the protection of life, liberty and security of the person, has a well-developed body of law around it.
After deciding to appeal the decision, Health Minister Tony Clement told the House of Commons Health Committee, There exists today a significant degree of uncertainty in the research and so, based on this, I believe that priority must be focused on treatment and prevention. For these reasons I can inform you today that I will be asking my colleague, Rob Nicholson, the minister of justice, to appeal Judge Pitfield s decision.
In May 2008, over 100 drug users sat in the legislative assembly in BC to see a private member s bill introduced which would designate Insite as a provincial health facility. Despite a standing ovation from members of the legislative assembly, legal scholars expect more intergovernmental legal wrangles ahead.
Margot Young, associate professor of law at the University of British Columbia, told Vancouver s Georgia Straight newspaper, The provincial government can t fix this problem just by legislative fiat. It s going to take a judge They can t legislatively claim jurisdiction like this.
Since opening, more than 8,000 people have visited Insite. There are about 600 daily visits.
Dr. Thomas Kerr, a research scientist with the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS and an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of British Columbia, in an interview about Insite earlier this year, said, We have a very serious public health problem here. It exists locally, nationally and internationally. This one intervention seems to be working really well. There is no debate about whether this works or not.
We shouldn t allow this issue to be politicised and allow it to overshadow the scientific evidence, he said. We need to disengage from this misrepresentation of the science and the research. Other jurisdictions should be allowed to move forward with their proposals. We need to end the human suffering associated with drug addiction rather than engage in these predictable debates that are distorted by politics.
This week, over 100 Insite supporters erected 868 wooden crosses on Parliament Hill to commemorate the number of overdoses at Insite which did not result in deaths because there were trained medical personnel at the centre.
*Am Johal is a supporter of the Friends of Insite Campaign
