RSS FeedDr. Gabor Maté of Insite
Democracy Now has an interview with Dr. Gabor Maté of Insite,
AMY GOODMAN: The Obama administration’s budget proposal for the Office of National Drug Control Policy sets aside nearly twice the amount of funding for law enforcement and criminalization than for treatment and prevention of drug addiction. Out of a total of $15.5 billion, some $10 billion are used for enforcement. National Drug Control Policy Gil Kerlikowske praised the numbers as reflecting a “balanced and comprehensive drug strategy.”
Well, just last year, the newly appointed drug czar and former Seattle police chief had called for an end to the so-called “war on drugs,” raising hopes among advocates of harm-reduction approaches to curbing drug use. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal last May, Kerlikowske said, “People see a war as a war on them. We’re not at war with people in this country.”
Well, I’m joined right now here in the Democracy Now! studio by a doctor who has spent the last twelve years working with one of the densest populations of drug addicts in the world. Dr. Gabor Maté is the staff physician at the Portland Hotel, a residence and harm reduction facility in Vancouver, Canada’s Downtown Eastside. Dr. Maté also treats addicts at the only safe-injection site in North America, a center that’s come under fire from Canada’s Conservative government led by Stephen Harper.
Dr. Gabor Maté is the bestselling author of four books. His latest, just out in the United States, is called In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction…
DR. GABOR MATÉ: Well, the first point to get there is that if people who become severe addicts, as shown by all the studies, were for the most part abused children, then we realize that the war on drugs is actually waged against people that were abused from the moment they were born, or from an early age on. In other words, we’re punishing people for having been abused. That’s the first point.
The second point is, is that the research clearly shows that the biggest driver of addictive relapse and addictive behavior is actually stress. In North America right now, because of the economic crisis, a lot of people are eating junk food, because junk foods release endorphins and dopamine in the brain. So that stress drives addiction.
Now imagine a situation where we’re trying to figure out how to help addicts. Would we come up with a system that stresses them to the max? Who would design a system that ostracizes, marginalizes, impoverishes and ensures the disease of the addict, and hope, through that system, to rehabilitate large numbers? It can’t be done. In other words, the so-called “war on drugs,” which, as the new drug czar points out, is a war on people, actually entrenches addiction deeply. Furthermore, it institutionalizes people in facilities where the care is very—there’s no care. We call it a “correctional” system, but it doesn’t correct anything. It’s a punitive system. So people suffer more, and then they come out, and of course they’re more entrenched in their addiction than they were when they went in.
Interviews on Insite at the B.C. C.A.
The Solution is Insite, Part II
In October 2008 I wrote a bit about my personal opinions and experiences with Insite, a unique, government-funded legal safe injection site that has been on the front lines of Vancouver’s drug epidemic. Insite was also recently the source of much attention at the First Annual Interprofessional Health Law Conference, covered by Omar. To my surprise, Insite and the legal issues surrounding it recently became the subject matter of a memorandum assigned to me by my “senior partner” (Legal Research and Writing professor). What I found in the course of writing this memo was a defective and hypocritical law, the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (“CDSA”), and a brave decision in the Supreme Court of British Columbia that might one day change Canada’s drug laws for the better.
Jason Lamarche on the Insite Program
As a follow-up to the previous post on the Insite program, here is some commentary from Jason Lamarche of the Liberal Minute.
The Harm Reduction Controversy & Injection Sites
Third post in a series on the First Annual Interprofessional Health Law Conference.
The harm reduction panel spoke about strategies for reducing communicable diseases. Most of the discussion focused on the controversy over injection sites.
The first legal injection site in North America was Insite in Vancouver, B.C. The downtown eastside area where the clinic is based was considered by the Canadian Community
Epidemiology Network on Drug Use (CCENDU) as the center of an injection drug epidemic.
The US Office of National Drug Control Policy called it “state-sponsored suicide,” and Harper later said, “We as a government will not use taxpayers’ money to fund drug use.”
The Solution is Insite
With an unabating drug epidemic and the winds of political change in the air, interest is growing in the United States for a less punitive and more liberal war on drugs.
One battle in this war is being fought, and won, in Canada by the City of Vancouver, British Columbia—and the tactics being used are controversial, to say the least.
No, not torture. In September 2003 Vancouver opened the first “safe injection site,” a legal facility for users of illegal narcotics. The facility is run by healthcare workers and funded by the provincial government, and it is the only facility of its kind in North America. It is called ‘Insite‘.
In July 2002 I travelled with a friend to Vancouver. We walked the streets of the then-notorious Downtown Eastside. Literally stepping over bodies and discarded needles, and politely declining invitations to enter alleyways, we met a young drug addict named Rob from Peterborough, Ontario. Boasting of his honesty, this former marathon runner told us he needed “$5 for crack.” We obliged, and were treated to a guided tour of misery, desperation, and sickness that exceeded anything I have ever seen in the developed world.
At the time of our visit, Insite had just been established; it was highly controversial and still illegal. I remember doubting that it would survive but coming to believe that it was Vancouver’s only hope.
In a terrific (though slightly dated) article entitled The needle and the damage undone, Mark Follman from Salon.com considers the challenges and successes of Insite since its establishment, as well as its potential application in the United States. Check it out.
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