Monsters Under The Bed Part 2 - Tony Clement

Ahhh... Tony Clement. You just won't go away will you?

How about now? ........ Now?

Got to give it to you mate, you are trying and try you will.

Tony (The Health Minister) was in Montreal today and spoke at the annual Canadian Medical Association's meeting.

"Is it ethical for health-care professionals to support the administration of drugs that are of unknown substance, or purity or potency — drugs that cannot otherwise be legally prescribed?"
"In this way, supervised injection sites undercut the ethics of medical practice, and set a debilitating example for all physicians and nurses, both present and future in Canada, who might begin to question whether it's OK to let someone overdose in their care."

There is an election coming up. Can you tell?

Tony and Stephen - like uncle George "I can't W.ait to hit the W.hiskey again and shoot some W.abbits" Bush. They know how to foster fear in the religious right or anyone who is simply uniformed. I am not connecting the two, they are just both easy demographics to scare. Ask Emperor Constantine, he made it into an art form that is still in use to this day. *See recent - Iraq / Afghanistan

Good on ya Tony. Politics is a game of numbers. No matter how much of an idealist you are, you got to get votes.
Now I personally subscribe to the notion of educating your... whatever - riding, municipality, Province and Country. Education is power.
Pretend that there are actually intelligent human beings out there and they can make a decision on their own.

Let me ask you a question, dear reader... If the latest Angus Reid poll said that 80% of all Canadians wanted a safe injection site in their town, do you think our little bud Tony Clement from Manchester, England. Would be so staunchly against INSITE?

Nope... or would he?

That is the question of the day....

Does he give a monkey's chunky about you or is this political right-wing righteousness? Well, you don't get to be righteous for long if you don't foster enough votes. So, one can only assume that he is either...

a) Insane

b) Completely comfortable that there are enough voters out there that really support his view and can't wait to check off Stephen Harper on their next trip to the ballot box.

c) Convinced that he can scare enough of you into believing that safe injection sites are the work of the devil and just lead society into a drug-fueled anarchy. Thus tipping the boat enough to get another term for Stephen Harper and all of his little henchman of doom.

d) Getting little messages from his boss (Harper) that his boss (American big business) is not happy with this little "party" going on up here in Vancouver.

So, what is it?

I personally think it more-or-less all of the above.

So, what is he trying to do? It has been proven. PROVEN. That safe injection sites work. All over the world. End of story. INSITE is an important ingredient in harm reduction. Not the be all - end all, but integral to the process. It also is a huge factor in disease control.
A University of British Columbia study found that drug users who regularly use Vancouver's safe-injection site are 70 per cent less likely to share needles than those who don't use this facility. Important number when you are looking at something like the spread of AIDS.

Let's give you another Tony quote, shall we?

“Allowing and/or encouraging people to inject heroin into their veins is not harm reduction, it is the opposite. … We believe it is a form of harm addition,” - Tony Clement.

This comment was presented the World Health Organization earlier this month.
For the record, the W.H.O. overwhelmingly supports safe injection sites.

Teguest Guerma, associate director of the HIV-AIDS department at the W.H.O. has been quoted numerous times as saying “The W.H.O. supports harm reduction.”

A W.H.O. document states...“Safe injecting sites are not a new intervention but simply a repackaging of existing W.H.O. -recommended interventions such as needle exchanges, etc.”
“They enable known, W.H.O. -recommended harm reduction interventions to be delivered and used in a safe environment with the aim of reaching the most marginalized and vulnerable of injecting drug users.”

So it occurs to me, Tony must have some proof or resounding support from the rest of the health community both here and abroad to support his strong stance and (let's face it) political posturing. Or at least enough voter support to enable him to smite us with his righteous mace of ignorance.

Here are the really important ones. I won't bore you with the endless list. Believe me, it's long.

1) World Health Organization - Supports harm reduction... including safe injection sites.

2) Canadian Medical Association - Supports harm reduction... including safe injection sites.

CMA president Brian Day says that about 80% of physicians support harm reduction through safe injection sites "The minister was off base in calling into question the ethics of physicians involved in harm reduction," "It's clear that this was being used as a political issue."

3) Canadian voters - The most recent Angus Reid poll says that 55% of all Canadians support safe injection sites.

Tony, drugs are not the issue here. Drugs are bad. Yes we get that part. Well... I will let you debate amongst yourselves the legalization of something that grows in the ground along with it's REAL evil cousins the cauliflower and the vile Brussle sprout... yuck... That is a subject for another day.

The issue I am concerned about here, to the extent I think I might have enough words in this blog to constitute a thesis. By trying to shut down Canada's only safe injection site - are we doing what's right for Canada or what is right for Stephen Harper?

Bear this in mind when it is your turn to walk into the ballot booth with your freshly sharpened pencil.