Evidence-based Decision Making

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2006/11/20/injection-study.html

My spidey sense is tingling people...

There are just so many reasons why the current Conservative government is so unwilling to engage in the debate over North America's only safe-injection site, right here in Van City's down and out East side: moral disagreement with the premise of the site, distrust of Ivory Tower Intellectuals, dislike of Lobby Groups, and I suspect a health dose of misunderstanding of the fundamentals of the debate itself, to name the more prominent reasons.

The facts as we know them are this: the newest study claims that the centre has increased the chances of safer injection practices among users and the likelihood of users to seek services to end addictions, and simaltaneously decreased the chances of spreading infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C. Even before this study, informal studies and anecdotal evidence already supported these claims.

The Conservative Government refused to sign off on the waiver that would permit the injection site to operate legally without reprecussions for users and staff onsite, despite the hard-won endorsements from various Law enforcement agencies involved in fighting the GVRD drug flow. Police agencies who were howling mad when the site first opened, claiming increased crime in the area would follow, came to see that it was far preferable to the uncertainty of dealing with needle sticks when dealing with high suspects. Instead, the government basically suspended the issue until 2007, putting the injection site in a precarious grey area of the law, just a nose hair's breadth away from being illegal until the full waiver is signed.

The same Conservative Government stated that more study was necessary to make the decision about the site's continued mandate, but cut the funding out from groups more than willing to conduct those studies, which is fishy...it leads one who is of a suspicious nature to suspect the Government of playing it's own pernicious game of Dodgeball following the Five D's...dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge. If we don't fund studies, fewer will come out in favour of the site, and we can legitimately shut 'er down. Hmmm....

spidey sense a-tingling