The U.S. Congress passed a sprawling spending bill over the weekend — a massive piece of legislation that will fund the federal government for the next nine months — that contained a number of social riders that have gone largely unnoticed in this holiday season of tax standoffs and shutdown threats. One in particular should trouble advocates of evidence-based policy: Congress has once again banned federal funding for sterile syringe exchange programs. Public health advocates consider such harm-reduction programs a crucial tactic in halting the spread of HIV/AIDS. Research suggests ... Read More
Supervised-Injection Site in Vancouver Meets Big Hurdle
May 11, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
This week, the Supreme Court of Canada will hear a case that could come to affect drug policy in the United States. At issue: Is the use of hard drugs necessarily a matter for federal criminal law? Or can cities and provinces (or states, if you prefer) handle it foremost as a health issue — in accordance with science that finds the approach protects the lives and safety of drug users? The question has been playing out since 2003 in British Columbia, just steps from some of the toniest areas in one of the world's most expensive cities. In Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, the poorest urban ... Read More
Fighting Drug War Creates Drug War
April 27, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
It's clear enough that the American appetite for weed, cocaine and meth — but mostly weed — has contributed to evil and lurid gang wars in Mexico. An appetite for heroin in Europe has helped fund the war in Afghanistan, too, and in that sense the old and new continents face the same important question: What might quell the violence? Over the last few weeks, this column has explored various drug policies in Europe and the United States. "War" still summarizes the American approach, in spite of changing rhetoric from the Obama administration. "Harm reduction" roughly summarizes the ... Read More
Contending With Afghan Heroin (And How Not To)
March 9, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
One open secret about the war in Afghanistan is that it has led to a flood of pure, cheap heroin in the world’s cities since 2001. “Despite reported decreases in white heroin production in most source countries,” the U.S. Justice Department admitted in 2006, “increased production in Afghanistan has resulted in an overall increase in worldwide white heroin production.” The production of white (or pure) heroin, in other words, had generally receded around the world — but supplies from war-torn Afghanistan more than picked up the slack. Now, according to some estimates, Afghanistan ... Read More
Handing Out Heroin
November 7, 2008 • By • 1 Comment
A groundbreaking experiment in Canada suggests the answer is a qualified "yes." From early 2005 to mid-2008, 251 hardcore junkies in Vancouver and Montreal were given taxpayer-funded opiates as part of an experimental program run by local health officials. Dubbed the North American Opiate Medication Initiative, the $8 million program was one of the most radical examples of Canada's embrace of the "harm reduction" school of thought toward illegal drug use. The idea is basically to treat substance abuse as primarily a health issue, not a criminal justice issue. Vancouver has taken this ... Read More
First, Reduce Harm
October 27, 2008 • By • 3 Comments
On a chilly, overcast morning in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia, a steady trickle of sallow-faced drug addicts shambles up to a storefront painted with flowers and the words “Welcome to Insite.” One by one, they ring the doorbell and are buzzed into a tidy reception area staffed by smiling volunteers. The junkies come here almost around the clock, seven days a week. Some just grab a fistful of clean syringes from one of the buckets by the door and head out again. But about 600 times a day, others walk in with pocketfuls of heroin, cocaine or speed that they’ve scored out on the ... Read More
