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Joined: 02 May 2007 Posts: 23 Location: Eastern Ontario
Posted: Tue May 15, 2007 7:12 pm Post subject: Journal attacks inSITE SIS and harm reduction philosophy
A couple months back a supposedly independent research article appeared in The Institute of Global Drug Policy's website
The article is a clever attack on the research done by inSITE. The purposed is the counter the inSITE research, and ultimately get the safer injection site closed down.
But the author has bigger goals as well. He wants to turn back harm reduction overall:
Quote:
Here are some recommendations for consideration as we move forward.
1. Depoliticize drug policy by making clear that harm reduction is not about compassion and caring for the marginalized and poor. A great deal of marginalization comes not before but after addiction has taken hold and begins to consume financial and personal resources. Some poverty and marginalization comes about through preexisting mental illness. There is no reason that, in a modern and advanced society, mentally ill people should be left to fend for themselves. The entire system of identifying mental illness and protocols for taking care of them needs to be strengthened. Otherwise, more and more mentally ill persons will drift into the hellhole that is life on the street in the DTES. Addiction needs to be recognized as a major cause and contributor to all other medical and social problems a person experiences. Policy must make clear that dealing with the addiction comes first.
2. Strengthen treatment and create mechanisms to get people into treatment. The road from street to treatment needs to be opened up widely. Presently, some policymakers place little priority on abstinence. These people need to be made to understand that getting off of drugs is the first, not last, step to recovery into a stable existence. If policymakers sit down with the people running long term care treatment facilities, certainly ways can be identified to get people off the street into treatment forthwith. We already know that treatment need not be voluntary to be effective. It is time to put into place mechanisms that direct people into treatment who, because of their addiction, either break the law or are putting themselves and others at significant risk. Sweden has accomplished significant success with compulsory treatment and has among Europe’s lowest crime, disease, medical and social problems stemming from addiction. Recently, a UN report described Sweden’s success with their restrictive drug policy supported by all national political parties:
A compulsory care order in Sweden can only be issued if certain legal conditions are met. The two conditions are: (a) that the person is in need of care/treatment as a result of ongoing abuse of alcohol, narcotics and volatile solvents and that (b) the necessary care cannot be provided under the Social Services Act. The first option for the substance abuser is always voluntary treatment under the Social Services Act. The social welfare committee, which works on the prevention and countermeasures of abuse of alcohol and other addictive substances, acts in consensus with the individual. (14)
As a matter of fact, Canada would be well advised to examine Swedish drug policy carefully, so distinct are its relative successes compared to similar European countries pursuing harm reduction-focussed strategies. The research described in the report is most encouraging. Given that Sweden is not a conservative country, it may show a way to depoliticize drug policy in Canada. The only beneficiaries of politicized drug policy are the members of the drug legalization movement.
4. Rein in the civil service and other government created and funded bodies. This paper has pointed out examples of a civil service operating independently of elected governments in setting drug policy directions and has cited specific examples of conflict of interest arising from a mixing of drug reform activists in with and as policy makers. There is currently no check on civil servants and others. In a democracy, such things as drug policies must be transparent to and involve the voice of the people. Without significant checks and a balancing in the civil service, harm reduction ideology will continue to propagate and sink roots in policy and programs so as to become very difficult to reverse. The federal government got a taste of this recently as they considered the extension of INSITE.
I always chuckle when I read recommendation #4 - "rein in the civil service and other government created and funded bodies... without significant checks and a balancing in the civil service, harm reduction ideology will continue to propogate and sink roots into policy and programs..." - I chuckle, but it's really very scary.
That reads very much like the RED SCARES of the 1950's in the way it sees a conspiracy that is like a sickness taking hold of government bodies which must be rooted out.
Anyhow, some good counter-arguements are being made.
One excellent one appeared in the Vancouver Sun on May 12 as an OP ED piece by Peter McKnight:
Quote:
The trouble, however, is that this most recent "study" isn't, and the "journal" it was published in isn't, either. Rather, the "journal" -- which goes by the impressive name, The Journal of Global Drug Policy and Practice -- is a non-peer reviewed website registered to the Drug Free America Foundation, not a scientific or medical journal.
Unlike real journals, which contain real studies written by real scientists, this "journal" includes a total of seven articles over its two issues, and all of those articles are commentaries rather than scientific studies.
And as we all know, anyone today can start a website, slap some opinion pieces on it and call it a journal. But that doesn't make it one, and it certainly doesn't put it in the league of The Lancet or the New England Journal of Medicine.
Similarly, the "study," by Colin Mangham, is an opinion piece funded by the RCMP -- as if the force doesn't have enough problems right now -- not a scientific study.
There are no hypotheses tested, no research design, no statistical analyses, only a poorly written and poorly argued commentary on Insite.
This is no surprise, since Mangham is "director of research" for the Drug
Prevention Network of Canada, a group of drug prohibitionists led by formerConservative MP Randy White, who praised Mangham's "study" because it "balanced" -- there's that word again -- reports about Insite.
You can read a full reprint of McKnight's OP ED piece here
Notice how the anti-harm reduction sites have a unified voice in going after the philosophy ("ideology") of harm reduction. Some even call it "harm promotion":
Harm reduction has come to represent a philosophy in which illicit substance use is seen as largely unpreventable, and increasingly, as a feasible and acceptable lifestyle as long as use is not “problematic”. At it's root of this philosophy lay an acceptance of drug use into the mainstream of society.
We reject this philosophy as fatalistic and faulty at its core. The idea that we can use drugs safely is a dangerous one. The potential problems from substance use are simply too varied, numerous and unpredictable. And, substance use is not inevitable. Families and communities have considerable power to prevent substance use if they have the will and resources.
Harm promotion, dubbed harm reduction, is a flawed notion proponents of the drug legalization movement use as a tactic to normalize drug use, claiming it is inevitable. Harm reduction attempts to reduce the physical consequences of drug use without reducing the use of legal and illegal drugs. The proven efficacy of drug prevention and abstinence-based treatment have the best potential for eliminating harm and addressing the drug problem.
Drug policies that embrace harm reduction strategies inevitably ignore drug use and instead focus on the harm caused by its use. They create the perception that drugs are not so dangerous, a perception that undoubtedly increases drug use. These strategies undermine and destroy prevention messages as they prolong addiction. Harm reduction is actually harm promotion because it asks society to accept drug use by adults and youth, alleging that drugs can be used safely and responsibly.
A simple webpage has been made to try and keep track of the back-and-forth of the debate about inSITE. You can find it here _________________
"You have enemies? Good. That means that somewhere, some time in your life, you stood up for something." - Sir Winston Churchill
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