By Darrin Fiddler

The federal government’s decision to keep up its campaign to shut down the Insite safe injection site displays sheer ignorance, disregarding the needs of those without hope. By closing the safe injection site, these archaic minds would cut the elusive support helping the addict to come clean. What sense is there in shutting down the facility that is providing assistance and hope? By giving in to their own fear tactics, they argue that in providing the facilities to shoot up, the number of addicts will climb and conditions will worsen. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, “The meaning of good and bad, of better or worse, is simply helping or hurting.”

This program has reduced the number of public injections, its litter, the needle sharing, and has led to an increased enrolment in detox programs and addiction treatment: all the signs of a dangerous program. Not surprising, these reports are among the many that our government has turned a blind eye to.

This plays out like a sequel for the patients of Riverview Hospital who fell to the street side when the facility was shut down in the mid-’80s. Shutting down Insite is like outlawing diet centres and raiding Narcotics Anonymous meetings—support that is otherwise unavailable. Are we going to allow the government to shut the doors and throw the addicted back on the street?

Childhood poverty is a foundation for growing into an addiction; if we don’t face these social factors now, our future will grow into ever-worsening conditions. A set of social conditions must be in place for addictions to develop. The stigma of drug dependency has us labeling its victims as “the addicted”. Growing up in a hopeless situation is likely to transfer into adulthood under the guise of habits. These habits are created to soothe the emptiness that these children have grown up with. Addictions are an echo of a person’s upbringing but are seen as the fault of the victim.

By vilifying the victim, the problem has become a criminal issue rather than social. As these narcotics are available only through the underground economy, it should be considered a failure of bureaucracy as the conditions worsen. We can fight this beast that feeds on the cold shoulder of society, or we can tame it by reinforcing our sense of humanity and providing help to those we have shunned.

To demonize an addiction is obscene in our consumerist society; while thievery may not be required to ease the obsession, this doesn’t clear it of causing harm. The social costs accrued through tobacco and alcohol total $32 billion, compared to $8.2 billion from illegal drugs. A food addict may not steal to feed their addiction, but this does not diminish its effect on society. Our obsession with cheap, unhealthy food takes its toll on the health-care budget, yet we don’t see SWAT teams raiding convenience stores for the harmful products. The costs of treating obesity-related diseases, estimated at $1.8 billion annually, span the life of the afflicted, accruing higher costs than the treatment for a drug addict.

Alternatives to help these victims must be in place if the government intends to shut down this assistance; our government must improve the conditions of those living on the fringe. Gabor Maté, in his book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction, writes: “The [safe injection site] is a link – for some their only link – between their street lives and the health care system and, for many, it is one of the first institutions they have encountered where they feel treated in a supportive, humane way.” As citizens, we must ensure that those with the least resources are empowered to participate in society. This is how community is built, and where hope can reside and grow.

Darrin Fiddler is an activist and writer observing from the Okanagan.