Precious Little Insight At Insite

"In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties,
nations and epochs, it is the rule" - Nietzsche

Insite, the organization that recently won the right in the Supreme Court of Canada, to continue to provide safe-injection sites to heroin users is now advocating inhalation rooms for crack smokers. There are two things that bother me about this. The first is that Insite admits it deliberately hid from the government and the court its plan to expand from safe-injection sites to providing places for crack addicts to smoke because they felt they might lose in court if they were open and transparent about their plans.

This is simply dishonest and is the same lack of transparency for which groups like Insite criticize the Conservative government. They've now acknowledged publicly that their plan is incremental, designed to creep in the backdoor rather than stating their full case before the public and letting the citizens of the community discuss, debate and decide. This is just wrong on so many levels that anyone but the most jaded or the most self-righteous can't see that. But then, there is nothing more self-righteous than those who put forward simplistic solutions to the complex issues they want to address and then cling to those solutions like a drowning man to a piece of driftwood.

Nothing will deter them from their cause because they are convinced that they are not only right in their solution but that no one else understands the issue like they do. In that way, they are like religious zealots who know they not only speak to God but for God as well. They are the chosen and they have a right to use whatever means is necessary to achieve their goals because the cause is righteous.

The second issue about Insite's expanding plan is simple hypocrisy. While there is an argument that can be made that safe-injection sites for heroin users might prevent the spread of deadly diseases (an argument I don't support but accept has some legitmate thought behind it) no such argument can be made about inhalation rooms. The concept of inhalation rooms is strictly about the drug user and legitimizes the use of illegal drugs to a point of making it acceptable even while it is illegal. Someone more cynical than I am might actually begin to believe that Insite was run or at least supported by pushers, dealers and users of illegal drugs. You can almost hear dealers salivating at the prospect of setting up shop to flog crack near an Insite Inhalation room.

What kind of madness is this? We live in a society that has all but imprisoned people who smoke cigarettes. The war on legally produced and sold tobacco products borders on fanaticism in some parts of the country while groups like Insite are proposing to pursue the establishment of inhalation rooms for crack users. Has this society lost it's mind? Can no one see the schizophrenic thinking going on here?

How is a society benefited from the legitimizing of a destructive and illegal drug like crack? How can an organization supposedly committed to harm reduction be so completely bereft of rational thought that it can't see the path of social destruction to which this kind of thinking leads? How can an organization that attacks others for their dishonesty be so dishonest in its tactics?

People in this country need to start paying attention. The road to Hell is paved with good, often misguided intentions and increasingly this kind of thinking is undermining the social fabric of the country we want. It is misguided intentions at best and abject stupidity at worst, clothed as harm reduction. 

Ask yourself a couple of simple questions. If there is a place where addicts can go and legally smoke an illegal drug like crack, how long will take for crack to gain a fair degree of legitimacy? How long will it be before someone's son or daughter, perhaps your son or daughter,  decide it might be a kick to go and give it a try? After all, the government has sort of sanctioned it under controlled circumstances...what's the harm?What road does that put your child on then? Is that a road you want them to travel and will it be too late to wish you had been more active in protecting them and your community from this stupidity before it started?

The Insite name is clever, designed to give the impression of forward and far-reaching thinking but at the end of the day, there's precious little insight in Insite.

For additional commentary please refer to earlier post http://bearsrant.blogspot.com/2011/10/safe-injection-sites.html

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