Stephen Lewis on UN safe-injection slam: "Complete poppycock!"

A UN-associated agency is -- once again -- publicly criticizing Canada for providing harm reduction for drug addicts, including initiatives such as the Vancouver safe-injection site, needle exchange programs and the distribution of safe crack pipe kits. And despite widespread disdain for the agency's opinion among Canadian public health officials, federal Health Minister Tony Clement told the Canadian Press "this is additional information that we will have regard for when a decision is rendered." Read more for an explanation of the agency's complaints against Canada and to listen to my interview with Stephen Lewis (pictured above) about the controversy.

THE REPORT
On Wednesday, the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), which calls itself "the independent and quasi-judicial control organ monitoring the implementation of the United Nations drug control conventions," released its Annual Report 2007 (PDF). The report includes a section titled "Evaluation of overall treaty compliance by selected Governments," under which Canada appears first. Here are the highlights:

• the INCB applauds Canada's abandonment of its erstwhile plan to decriminalize marijuana (proposed legislation never made it out of committees in 2004);
• approves of the new federal Anti-Drug Strategy, the same one that has been criticized by many public health experts;
• and reminds us that it considers Vancouver's safe-injection site in violation of the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (PDF), an issue I blogged about in November.

CANADIAN CRITICS
Scathing opinions of the INCB's report from a number of influential Canadian addiction policy experts have been reported by the Canadian Press:

• Senator Larry Campbell, former Vancouver mayor: "I will stand at the doorway if necessary when they try to close it. What are they going to charge me with? I'm not supplying drugs. I'm supplying health."
• Dr Thomas Kerr, British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS: "I wouldn't be surprised if the federal Conservative government uses it as an excuse to try and continue to stop harm reduction interventions from operating and to further justify its completely non-evidenced anti-drug strategy approach... [the INCB's] position is totally disingenuous."
• Richard Pearshouse, lawyer and policy analyst with the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network: "The INCB report is driven more by ideology and a war on drugs ideology than the research and the scientific evidence that supports these as a public health intervention."
  

The Ontario government has also voiced its opposition to the INCB report, according to the Globe and Mail, on the grounds that the INCB opinion contradicts research and recommendations from the World Health Organization.

STEPHEN LEWIS
I recently spoke with Stephen Lewis -- the former UN Special Envoy for AIDS in Africa and former Canadian ambassador to the UN, who's now teaching global health policy at McMaster University -- about the INCB's pronouncements on Canada. (This conversation took place last month, before the new Annual Report was released.)

His first words on the subject? "Complete poppycock!"

Listen to the rest of what he had to say here:


A full-length version of my Q&A with Stephen Lewis will appear in the National Review of Medicine in the coming months.


Photo: Nick Wiebe, courtesy of the Stephen Lewis Foundation

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