On Wednesday, August 3rd the Calgary Sun posted an article addressing Alberta Health Services' harm reduction programs in Calgary. As a supporter of harm reduction, we at AIDS Calgary Awareness Association felt it necessary to defend harm reduction principles and have created an editorial response to their recent article. We have also posted the Calgary Sun’s article below our response.
Letter to the Editor: Calgary Sun
Re: Thinking a helping hand will get users to drop the rock is ‘nonsense’, August 3, 2011
The effectiveness and the intention behind harm reduction is an extremely misunderstood, stigmatized and often misconstrued ideal. However, there is a mountain of evidence which supports that harm reduction practices have greatly reduced the spread of infections, saves lives and is ultimately far more cost effective than providing treatment through our national health care.
The fundamental idea behind harm reduction is not the intention to enable drug users to further their addictions, but instead, to reduce the transmission of blood borne pathogens such as Hepatitis C (HCV) and HIV.
A recent example of the effectiveness of harm reduction practices is Vancouver’s safe injection site InSite. InSite uses a health focused approach to providing injection drug users a safe environment to inject drugs while providing access to health care services. By providing access to health care and treatment services through harm reduction programing, studies have shown this can actually encourage reducing drug use and/or instigate quitting. Through the InSight website there are numerous scientific studies available which support this and other harm reduction findings.
Overall, harm reduction is a way to work with people who use drugs and has shown to reduce the negative effects of drug use. We have to recognize that abstinence and quitting are not always options for some individuals. Providing these individuals with items like needles, crack pipes and condoms only protect them and others from contracting or transmitting HIV/HCV; a much smaller price to pay than taxing our already over saturated health care system.
- AIDS Calgary Awareness Association
This blog was originally posted August 4, 2011 on AIDS Calgary's The A Word http://aidscalgary.blogspot.com/
Thinking a helping hand will get users to drop the rock is ‘nonsense’, August 3, 2011
Nadia Moharib Calgary Sun
"Whether it’s needles, condoms or crack pipes, officials doling out tools of the trade is tantamount to giving up on those battling addictions.
Unless the effort goes beyond simply enabling, it risks being a short-term, simplistic and flawed solution in lieu of one which works.
Retired Calgary police drug expert Pat Tetley says giving crack pipes to addicts is “an admission we have failed in harm reduction and perpetrating the offence.”
It is, he says, “nonsense.”
Alberta Health officials disagree and have, thousands of times, demonstrated that position by distributing free pipes quietly in recent years.
They insist the so-called harm-reduction tactic doesn’t simply stop when one is in hand but is an olive branch to ideally lead an addict to help in kicking the habit.
They can’t scientifically measure the program’s success but are certain it works.
Perhaps they don’t have empirical evidence because it doesn’t work.
The program is not unlike needle parks which, albeit well-intentioned, simply ghettoize addicts.
Rather than putting them on a solid path to recovery, it allows them to wallow and waste away quietly, far from a sober society not wanting to see the ugliness of an addiction left to fester.
They might as well load the pipes with crack, too.
‘MJ’ MacLeod, a Calgary psychologist, was speechless when asked to weigh in on the program she was shocked to learn exists.
“You’re not serious?” she asked.
She says harm reduction can be beneficial in some scenarios, but runs the risk of endorsing drug use — “on some level, making it OK.”
Backing the concept of reaching out to addicts, she doubts a viable plan would include pushing pipes.
“Giving hope there is help is a great idea, but going to the extent of handing out crack pipes — I don’t think so,” she says.
Neal Berger, Cedars at Cobblie Hill’s executive director, says the program is nothing more than “palliative care,” for addicts in need of cures.
It is “exceptionally naive,” to think a viable escape plan includes a clean pipe and short-term support, he says.
Rather than smoke-and-mirror solutions, he says, they need residential treatment and years of support.
“To suggest this is any part of a treatment continuum is absurd,” he says from the B.C.-based addictions treatment centre frequented by Calgarians who can afford the out-of-pocket cost.
“It will likely make it worse, not better. The reality is, it gives further licence to it. I would not want to be the person who provided the pipe which results in someone doing brain damage.”
Tetley, a drug expert for 15 years with city police, is disgusted by the initiative.
While there are several viable ways to beat crack addictions — like intensive treatment, jail, police efforts to dry up the market and death — none include passing out pipes, he says.
“It’s just ridiculous, it’s not even putting a Band-Aid on Niagara Falls,” he says.
“Passing out a crack cocaine pipe to a crack user is like passing a joint around.”
While Calgary clinical psychologist Glen Edwards concedes the pipes might mitigate some associated health concerns, he worries it might stop short of education and support people need to successfully fight addictions.
“If it’s the only thing we do it’s only harm reduction, not helping them with their illness,” he says. “Harm reduction doesn’t treat addiction, it reduces harm only.”
Police association president John Dooks scoffs at the idea fearing it pitches addicts deeper into the drug world, many relying on crime to feed an addiction.
“Are we not enabling addicts and worse yet, making it easier for traffickers to market their drugs?” he asks.
Over the years addicts who languished on long wait lists have complained about how tough it is to get meaningful help for addictions in this city.
Health officials would do better to focus on real solutions rather than the pipe-dream that free drug paraphernalia is a good plan.
The bottom line is, handing out pipes means promoting the use of crack cocaine to the very people trying to escape its clutches — something health officials should put in their figurative pipe …and smoke
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