Bonehead Clement Needs An Injection

Unforgiven

Force majeure
May 28, 2007
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ANDRÉ PICARD
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
August 19, 2008 at 2:57 AM EDT

MONTREAL - Health professionals who support Vancouver's safe injection site are unethical and immoral, federal Health Minister Tony Clement suggested on Monday.
"The supervised injection site undercuts the ethic of medical practice and sets a debilitating example for all physicians and nurses, both present and future in Canada," he scolded in an address to the Canadian Medical Association general council meeting in Montreal.
He called providing a safe injection site to drug addicts tantamount to offering palliative care to a patient with a treatable form of cancer.
Health Minister Tony Clement addresses the Canadian Medical Association at their 141st Annual Meeting in Montreal, Monday. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Graham Hughes)

"This is a profound moral issue, and when Canadians are fully informed of it, I believe they will reject it on principle," the minister said.


His comments come as the Conservatives have bombarded urban ridings in Vancouver and Toronto with ads, sent free using MPs' mailing privileges, that depict a discarded syringe and a headline that states: "Junkies and pushers don't belong near children and families. They should be in rehab or behind bars."
The campaign, in addition to Mr. Clement's remarks, shows the Conservatives are trying to make illegal drugs an issue that will separate them from other parties and influence key swing voters, especially women.

On Monday, Mr. Clement took issue specifically with a letter he received from CMA president Brian Day that stated: "There is growing evidence that harm-reduction efforts can have a positive effect on the poor health outcomes associated with drug use."
The minister retorted: "Is it true that supervised injections offer 'positive health outcomes?' I would not put it this way. Insite [Vancouver's safe injection site] may slow the death spiral of a deadly drug habit, but it does not reverse it. I do not regard this as a positive health outcome."

After the speech, Dr. Day said the "minister is off base in calling into question the ethics of physicians" and accused Mr. Clement of "manipulating medical ethics to make a political point."

Dr. Day noted that in a poll of Canadian physicians, 79 per cent supported harm-reduction measures, including safe injection sites.
"We have an opinion based on scientific evidence. The minister has come to a different conclusion," he said.

Carolyn Bennett, the Liberal public-health critic and a physician, was livid after the minister's speech.
"I've never seen such an offensive performance by a health minister," she said. "How dare he come to a meeting of professionals and scold them about their perceived ethical failings."

At Insite, a small facility in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, drug users inject themselves while supervised by nurses and physicians, and receive counselling about rehabilitation.
Clean needles are provided, but drugs are not; the principal purpose is to limit the spread of infectious diseases. Insite was granted an exemption from federal drug laws in 2003 so its users cannot be prosecuted for drug possession.

The Conservative government has vowed to close Insite, but the facility won a reprieve this spring when the B.C. Supreme Court struck down parts of Canada's drug laws. Ottawa has appealed.

Mr. Clement said yesterday that he would like Insite to "remain open with a changed mandate of prevention and treatment instead of drug maintenance."
He said that drug addicts need treatment, and safe injection facilities are counterproductive.

"Injections are not medicine. They do not heal. We need to offer them healing."
The new Conservative ad campaign picks up where Mr. Clement's message leaves off with its call to "keep junkies in rehab and off the streets." It includes pictures of the party leaders and asks which of them is on track to fight crime.

The text reads: "Thugs, drug pushers and others involved in the drug trade are writing their own rules. For too long, lax Liberal governments left gangs and drug pushers to make their own rules and set their own criminal agenda. Those days are over."
The Tories have lower support among women, and pollsters for both Conservatives and Liberals have found that women and seniors feel vulnerable to crime. A promise to keep junkies away from children is a direct pitch.

The pamphlets have opposition MPs accusing the Tories of electioneering with public funds. Each MP is allowed to send free mail to a number of households outside their riding that is equal to 10 per cent of their own riding. Some of the drug pamphlets sent to Toronto homes came under the stamp of Alberta MP John Williams; others sent to Vancouver were marked from MPs from other parts of the country.

Vancouver Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh said the pamphlets are too partisan to be acceptable under the 10-per-cent mailing rule, which is supposed to cover an MP's parliamentary duties. "This message goes beyond what ought to be an acceptable 10 per center," he said. "What's questionable is the ethics of a government that would allow vulnerable people to die without getting help."

A Conservative Party spokesman, Ryan Sparrow, rejected the suggestion that the pamphlet was too partisan. "You're debating a policy and you're asking which political party or which political leader is on the right track," he said.

With reports from Campbell Clark and Robert Matas
 

tracy

House Member
Nov 10, 2005
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Health care is not always about clean and tidy moral decisions. I wonder when was the last time he actually cared for a patient..... Oh right, never.
 

TenPenny

Hall of Fame Member
Jun 9, 2004
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Location, Location
So let's think about this.

If safe injection sites are the answer, why are we, at the same time, discouraging smoking? Isn't this somewhat hypocritical - that smoking a legal substance is wrong, yet injecting illegal drugs is something that we have to subsidize and provide special funding for?

Doesn't anyone see the disconnect here?
 

lone wolf

Grossly Underrated
Nov 25, 2006
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In the bush near Sudbury
So let's think about this.

If safe injection sites are the answer, why are we, at the same time, discouraging smoking? Isn't this somewhat hypocritical - that smoking a legal substance is wrong, yet injecting illegal drugs is something that we have to subsidize and provide special funding for?

Doesn't anyone see the disconnect here?

Safe injection site.... A place where the needle will be safely discarded ... a place where kids won't find it under the swings or in the sandbox then go play doctor. The junkie will die his/her own slow death. There's nothing any of us can do to stop them unless they want to stop. Why take some innocent kid along for the ride? That's worth the subsidy and special funding in my book. What if it was YOUR kid?
 
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Outta here

Senate Member
Jul 8, 2005
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Edmonton AB
So let's think about this.

If safe injection sites are the answer, why are we, at the same time, discouraging smoking? Isn't this somewhat hypocritical - that smoking a legal substance is wrong, yet injecting illegal drugs is something that we have to subsidize and provide special funding for?

Doesn't anyone see the disconnect here?

Well I hate to a) point out the obvious, and b) sound cynical, but to my knowledge, the government isn't raking in a sizable income on the sale of 'illegal' drugs.

but yes, it is indeed hypocritical.
 

tracy

House Member
Nov 10, 2005
3,500
48
48
California
So let's think about this.

If safe injection sites are the answer, why are we, at the same time, discouraging smoking? Isn't this somewhat hypocritical - that smoking a legal substance is wrong, yet injecting illegal drugs is something that we have to subsidize and provide special funding for?

Doesn't anyone see the disconnect here?

Smoking is bad, but it isn't heroin. I may be unaware, but has someone contracted Hep C and HIV from taking a drag on someone else's cigarette or accidentally touching the butt they discarded? If not, it seems pretty obvious to me the two are very different.
 

talloola

Hall of Fame Member
Nov 14, 2006
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Vancouver Island
The lung cancer, which the medical communit y will immediately jump to 'fix', without any
questions at all,' probably', (not always) was caused by the person smoking, which connects directly to
the cigarettes that the government gladly sell to make huge profits from taxes.

That patient was not going to stop smoking either, just like the addict is not going to stop
injecting, so, everyone has to be helped in some way, and just turning one's back, but also
knowing that addicts are freely wandering around the streets injecting anywhere with any
clean or dirty needles then discarding them anywhere, must be stopped.

I wonder what percentage of addicts use the injection site, compared to the ones who still do not.
 

Nuggler

kind and gentle
Feb 27, 2006
11,596
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Backwater, Ontario.
:angry3:Bonehead Clement Needs An Injection:

preferably, lethal; but probably won't happen.

Comparing cigs and illicit drugs ain't kosher. Many, many, people have quit smoking over the last few years after finally being told the "truth" about its' effects - Nuggler included.........about 20 years ago. Those who choose not to will probably get cancer, maybe sooner, maybe later. Non smokers also get it, but that's a moot point. Bad things happen to non smokers. But, at a reduced rate. Crap shoot, right?

Drug addicts,...........8O?, dunno. Haven't ever been one and don't plan to start anytime soon. But, if, and it's a big if.........people eventually wise up and DON'T become addicts, (oh some will, of course), we will eventually see addicts dying off, and fewer coming on line..............So let's have the sites, and keep playgrounds and streets free of discarded needles..........make sense?? And then, maybe someday, hooonose!

I have never seen the stats on how much it costs to maintain the injection sites, vs. the fallout of not doing it. Clement, of course, will twist it if he can. He did so much to help in Ontario during the Harris reich..................not.

But then, I could be wrong.:cool:




 

tracy

House Member
Nov 10, 2005
3,500
48
48
California
The lung cancer, which the medical communit y will immediately jump to 'fix', without any
questions at all,' probably', (not always) was caused by the person smoking, which connects directly to
the cigarettes that the government gladly sell to make huge profits from taxes.
.

The reason we jump to fix diseases caused by smoking has nothing to do with money. Almost all health conditions have a behavioral component. Smoking and lung cancer is the easy one to name, but there's also diabetes, just about every kind of cancer, heart disease, strokes, liver diseases, etc. If we stopped treating one, we'd have to stop treating all of them. Pretty soon the hospitals would be almost empty.

Illicit drug users are easy to blame for their problems and it's easy to say they shouldn't get treatment since most of us don't identify with them. The fact that we see them as lesser than us in almost every way makes them the perfect target for politicians. It's hard to look at them and see that they are like us in most ways.