Providing safety from HIV/AIDS isn't enabling....it is ensuring reduction of disease.

In response to Barbara Kay’s article Insite Clinic Enables drug users….Insite is a supervised injection site and there is no need to put quotation marks around it as it is exactly what it says, supervised and an injection site. “Safe injection site” was a term erroneously labelled by the media but in the harm reduction movement, it was never called safe as it is never entirely but it is supervised meaning onsite nurses who can save a life who may one day live to recover and live the they were meant to. The site however is safer then no supervision at all.

Harm reduction is not “supposedly” a the four pillar Drug Strategy it is, however the conservative government has made an incredible misguided effort at trying to prove that harm reduction doesn’t in fact work. Harm reduction is a pragmatic response to a health emergency where people are dying from diseases and overdoses. The scientific evidence is in for insite in 40 peer-reviewed scientific journals stating Insite has satisfied the objectives of it and more. In addition, these journals have proven that insite does not initiate new injection drug use.

Would you give sugar to a diabetic who didn’t have enough in there blood? Addiction is a brain illness that requires proper treatment of the brain for it to be effectively dealt with and detox with meetings for AA to follow doesn’t consist of effective treatment. True compassion occurs with the idea that people can change but they can’t because they are ill.

It is sort of like how people with cancer can’t suddenly cure themselves but they can sure help themselves try to do it. The difference between a person with cancer and a person with mental health issues is the person with cancer still has their mind. Addicts lost theirs years before trying drugs. In all likelihood they began to use drugs as a way of contending with unimaginable trauma usually involving sexual as it was the only way to escape their own hell of their body. It is a way of dissociating from pain most of us can’t ever imagine.

Most people who abuse drugs have PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder, which if you are a veteran or rape victim later in life you may get some okay services for but if you are a child who was likely abused by a family member who was supposed to be taking care of you in either sexual, physical or even emotional and neglectful abuse this type of PTSD isn’t recognized by society. It isn’t seen by those who haven’t experienced it as a child as an excuse for emotional dysregulation, hyper vigilance, inability to concentrate, mood swings, nightmares, and paralyzing fear to the point of where thought is impossible due to how the brain works.

The safety net is not about putting a net under a bridge even though for some places that does happen because so many people jump or barricades to prevent it, it is about being a human and treating others as a human rather then a criminal for their illness. The same goes for people who kill themselves. They are ill and have a brain that is not working the correct way, it is the same as how a diabetic doesn’t have their pancreas work correctly. This article has essentially said go ahead and kill yourselves cause really we don’t care about you anyway. You have no family to help you so just die please.

The people whom are addicts and use the service of Insite include those that use alone, without family or friends or are in violent relationships and need somewhere safe to go. There are many who have substance dependence along with serious mental health issues that are someones child, that are talented and incredible people whom if just given the tools could maybe help crawl out of the hole they were put in by the abuse they experienced before they had a chance to defend themselves.

If we want to reduce addiction we have to reduce the trauma children endure by taking better care of mothers, fathers, families (whatever the structure) and reducing the dislocation of those most vulnerable.