U.S. wanted Vancouver’s supervised injection site closed

That’s the title of this article in The Vancouver Sun.

OTTAWA — A diplomatic cable shows U.S. officials opposed the Insite supervised injection site in Vancouver and wanted the federal and municipal governments to shut it down. […]

The memo is generally favourable of the federal Conservative government’s efforts to clamp down on the production and distribution of illicit drugs, including a national awareness campaign targeting youth and parents.

“However, local and provincial authorities have embarked on a number of so-called ‘harm-reduction’ programs,” reads the cable, “including a drug injection site and distribution of drug paraphernalia to chronic users.”

The document notes the federal government “continues to deliver a sharp message” to cities and provinces about the programs, but called for stronger action.

“Canada, or, as appropriate, municipalities such as Vancouver and Ottawa, should implement the (International Narcotics Control Board’s) recommendations to eliminate drug injection sites and drug paraphernalia distribution programs,” the cable reads, “because they violate international drug control treaties.”

No real surprise, there.

Fortunately, Canada’s Supreme Court has protected the Insite clinic from attempts by the Harper administration to shut it down.

Canada’s top judges, in a sharp rebuke of one of Harper’s key law-and-order planks, said the government’s attempt to shut down North America’s only nurse-supervised injection site for drug addicts violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The U.S. cable is available here. It also notes that “DEA conducted a five-day seminar in Montreal on asset forfeiture and money laundering for 40 members from various law enforcement agencies…” Gotta export that drug war in every way possible, you know.

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29 Responses to U.S. wanted Vancouver’s supervised injection site closed

  1. Brian D. says:

    Apparently, DEA and ONDCP officials can’t sleep at night knowing that somewhere in the world, someone isn’t being punished for using drugs.

  2. claygooding says:

    I have yet to figure out if our drug warriors want to stop drugs or just cause drug users as much trouble and harm as they can,while trying to keep all the black markets in business.

  3. Paul says:

    Canada is not as gung-ho on the drug war as America, especially where MJ is concerned. They need to grow a pair and just legalize MJ. What is America going to do about it, really?

    And best they do it before the next election. Obama is a fairly cowardly president. He’s not going to move to punish Canada in any meaningful way. But president Perry? Ugh.

    • Gart says:

      Rick Perry is the archetypical representative of US psyche. The tragedy for Latin America is that when it comes to foreign policy, it is irrelevant who is elected as US president. Paraphrasing Carlos Fuentes, a prominent Mexican writer, the only way the US can sustain its democratic façade internally is by behaving undemocratically externally.

      Gart Valenc
      http://www.stopthewarondrugs.org

  4. allan says:

    bullies… is what we’ve allowed US to become. The onus is on US to stop these… mmmmmm… assholier-than-thou types and this crusade they drag us all on. At the rate they’re going someone will seriously raise the “T” word in challenge to the Prohib sado-moralist thugs and not be far from the truth. These are the enemies within, have no doubt.

  5. no_one_important says:

    yeah lets prevent addicts from getting access to clean needles. That’s not going to cause any increase in disease or anything come on!

  6. ezrydn says:

    “President Perry?” Please, don’t go there. He’s not the only fish in the stream, by a long shot! No matter what the media says!!!

    • Windy says:

      Perry’s actually losing ground and Cain (who is just as bad but in different ways) is making ground, but the media won’t tell you who the real front runner is, because he’s someone they don’t want in the presidency. The real front runner is Ron Paul and this time around the media won’t be able to prevent him from gaining the nomination, the people will see to that.

      • Paul says:

        I dunno…the media and the establishment almost always get what they want. They hate Paul, and they will bury him. Their man is Perry, plain as day.

      • Paul says:

        Come to think of it, Cain would at least be something different as president. Entertaining, anyway.

        Not that I think he’ll win. The media and establishment have a way of focusing on the most depressing, useless candidate out of the bunch. They don’t pick the most obviously awful, like say, Santorum. Santorum’s purpose is to be so awful he makes the others look better, in much the same way a supermarket may have a $5, $8, $14, and $60 dollar bottle of wine on the shelf to get you view the $14 dollar bottle as the best buy.

        Santorum is the $60 dollar bottle of insane conservatism, and Perry is the $14 bottle.

  7. Duncan20903 says:

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    Evidence, schmevidence, it just doesn’t work. Why, just look at Vancouver (Canada). The whole dadgum town is addicted to heroin because of this Insite place. Why do you think they want to keep it open instead of just following orders and shutting it down? We’ve got to remember, Harry J. Anslinger warned us that heroin is a gateway drug to merrywanna. Even worse, Sgt. Friday knew that heroin was a gateway drug to LSD. If you don’t believe me, we’ve got him stating so in no uncertain terms when he busted Timothy Leary and summarily sentenced him to a long winded, self righteous lecture:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Twre6ItGEI
    ——— ——— ——— ——— ——— ——— ———

    Say, has anyone else noticed there are never any heroin/opioid users that post in the comments columns of stories like this? It seems like every third comments column that I visit with more than a few submissions finds an idiot Know Nothing prohibitionist regurgitating the idiotic notion that addicts will do anything to get high. For instance some will even go as far as coming up with a logical argument based on factual evidence, form politically active groups that petition governments for changes in failed public policy, and even post their arguments in comments columns of the sort mentioned above, as in the case of those who suffer from the fiction of merrywanna addiction. Why is it that those who use/abuse/enjoy/whatever coke, opioids, street meth, model airplane glue, gasoline, et cetera don’t do that? Why doesn’t my spell check software recognize latin phrases like malum in se, res ipsa loquitur, et cetera?

  8. Duncan20903 says:

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    Oh say, the article in the Globe and Mail the other day got me to look up the data published by the folks who run the Swiss H.A.T. program. It sure looks like they’re making things better:
    http://www.bag.admin.ch/themen/drogen/00042/00629/00798/01191/index.html?lang=en&download=NHzLpZeg7t,lnp6I0NTU042l2Z6ln1ad1IZn4Z2qZpnO2Yuq2Z6gpJCHeIR8gWym162epYbg2c_JjKbNoKSn6A–

    Caution: Sahara desert dry.

  9. kant says:

    I think this should be clear message to everyone. So long as the ONDCP & DEA have a say the US won’t even let a sovereign country take their own approach to drug programs. So how honestly believes they would let a state take a different one?

  10. darkcycle says:

    It would look bad. Harm reduction works, prohibition doesn’t. Simple. It’s not good for appearences to have a successful supervised injection site that saves lives just forty miles from the border, when our official policy is to let addicts die. Better their addicts should die, so our politicians won’t look bad.

    • Duncan20903 says:

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      Confess damn you. You are notSpicoli, aren’t you? OK, you don’t need to reveal your secret identity, and the knowledge is safe & secure with me. Carry on. BTW there are 49 other States, they certified Alaska and Hawaii about 51 years ago.

      notSpicoli , The American government persists in waging a losing war against a plant. It is time to stop the war and decriminalize or legalize marijuana use in the United States.

      What a kind thing to say. I’m not particularly wise, just old and I read alot. I don’t know that we are doing so poorly relative to the other 47 states. But it is critical to keep the momentum going by getting I-502 before the legislature and/or the voters in 2012.

      * 5 hours ago
      * in reply to Alison Whiteman

      http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/10/01/1847960/despite-changing-rules-medical.html#ixzz1ZfrhbCYe

      • Duncan20903 says:

        .
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        notSpicoli , The American government persists in waging a losing war against a plant. It is time to stop the war and decriminalize or legalize marijuana use in the United States.

        San Hoyo, California: A coroner’s report released yesterday by police confirmed the presence of marijuana compounds in the system of Jonah Ellis, a 23-year-old man who was killed last Thursday just outside the town limits when struck by a meteorite.

        Police Chief Dirk Jackson refused to speculate whether this news would have an impact on the upcoming referendum on the legalization of marijuana in California this November, but noted that, “In the 10 years I’ve been in San Hoyo, 100% of meteorite fatalities have been marijuana-related, demonstrating a clear link. It’s certainly got to make you think.”

        Calvina Califano, spokesperson for Citizens Resisting Against Pot, had harsher words to say about the referendum. “If legalization passes,” shesaid, “you can absolutely count on an increase in meteorite strikes. And we won’t be as lucky the next time. People will be smoking pot outside day-care centers, and when that meteorite strikes, the collateral damage will be measured in mothers sifting through the rubble for the mangled corpses of their infant children. Marijuana: harmless? Let those legalizers tell that to the grieving mothers.”

        A representative of the Coalition to Legalize and Regulate Marijuana in California claimed that the meteorite strike was unrelated to marijuana use, but was unable to precisely explain why Jonah Ellis was hit.

        Scientists note that meteorites are formed from the debris of asteroids,and that there are literally millions upon millions of asteroids. If marijuana is legalized, it could take many years to exhaust the supply, and some say the damage to society could be permanent.
        (courtesy of the DrugWarRant)

        http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/10/01/1847961/getting-ok-for-medical-pot-is.html#ixzz1ZftXUKjU

        Don’t worry, most people are so stupid that they can’t even recognize Clark Kent without his glasses. Truth, justice, and the American Way indeed.

        I hadn’t before seen the classic Guither quoted above. Spot on Pete.

        • Duncan20903 says:

          .
          .
          Say, a Google for “Calvina Califano, spokesperson for Citizens Resisting Against Pot, had harsher words to say about the referendum.” returned 4,320 items and accepting the invitation “Did you mean to search for: Calvina Califano, spokesperson for Citizens Resisting Against Pot, has harsh words to say about the referendum.” kicked out 13,100 more. Some of those 13,100 even had relevance to my search!

          My spell check software does not like the way Calvina spells her name.

        • Duncan20903 says:

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          OK, my mistake. I thought Pete wrote the parody above.

        • Duncan20903 says:

          .
          .
          It certainly struck me as being written in your singular style, but I actually dug up that entry and there was a link to “The Daily Tonteria” and I mistakenly thought was an actual source of which I was unaware and which you were giving credit. Had I tried the link at that time I would have been even more confused.

        • Pete says:

          Yeah, I put the link to the made-up Daily Tonteria so it would look like it was a legitimate article at first, but it just links back to the Drug WarRant story itself. “Tonteria” is Spanish for “stupidity/nonsense.”

      • darkcycle says:

        No, Duncan, I’m NOT notSpicoli. But I’d shake his hand.
        Say now, maybe it’s me, but has you noticed an increase in the number of web crusaders using our M.O.?
        First I noticed that at the local newspaper comment forums there seemed to be a regular commenter soapboxing. Now I’m running across them more and more, and I see an increase in the number of multi-forum Google-hit writers now as well…. hmmm. Maybe it is just me.
        I wish I had more time to give it now, I’m pretty slammed. Maybe it’ll slow down a little some here, but for now, I do about one comment a day out in the web-world (‘course, I’ll find the time for two cents here, since I’m not really “soapboxing”, and don’t have to put so much thought in.)

        • allan says:

          aaah… those were all your pennies under the couch cushions…

          Did you know those pennies could provide an addict a week’s worth of heroin if Prohibition ended and HAT was utilized?

        • Duncan20903 says:

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          OK Clark, you just report the news, you don’t make it. 😀

          I’m really bedeviled now by the question, why in the world did Superman need a secret identity? Batman did, obviously because Wayne Industries and Mr. Wayne personally would have been being sued constantly. Peter Parker would have suffered no end of requests to do stupid spider ticks. But Superman had no vast wealth,

          Did he need the paycheck? He certainly didn’t finance his Fortress of Solitude on a reporter’s salary. How much flipping money could he have made promoting the Superman Dietâ„¢ (for future men and women of steel)? Did he think it wouldn’t work because his diet was so high in iron? You don’t get to be the man of steel without eating a lot of iron you know. All of this stuff is just mind boggling.

          He had the hots for Lois? Shee-it, she had the hots for Superman. But if you think it through Trojans just wouldn’t have cut the mustard. In fact, her head would probably have been blown of if he had climaxed inside her. Faster than a speeding bullet indeed.

          Speaking of impossible love, I used to own a very large dog who for some reason thought house cats were very attractive, but the poor dog was to large to ever make the connection. It never did cease to amaze me how many kitty cats were just as willing, they just never were able to figure out how to make it work. Think Marmaduke and the Taco Bell dog for reference. “Throckmorton, go fuck the cat!” led to no end of utter hilarity for the humans and cruel frustration for the dog and the cat.

        • tensity1 says:

          Some people have too much time on their hands. Might as well put it to good use.

        • darkcycle says:

          Well, what can I say. From Superman to the the sexual exploits of pets. Duncan, have you been watching Kevin Smith movies again?
          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1AadzrK324

  11. darkcycle says:

    *sigh*
    This thread has digressed, devolved, and then self-destructed.

  12. warren says:

    The govt of canada will bend over and spread wide for the U.S. . Like they did when they gave up Marc Emery.What a bunch of CHICKEN SHITS.

  13. DdC says:

    Keep Vancouver’s Insite Open, Supreme Court Rules
    The Harper government said Friday it is disappointed but will comply with a unanimous Supreme Court of Canada ruling which concluded that the government’s attempt to shut down North America’s only supervised injection site violates the Charter of Rights.

    Canada’s Supremes Cower Under DEAth Threats 2/24/03

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