Harper’s drug strategies won’t win in Vancouver

The City of Vancouver is showing itself to be a trailblazer, leading the way for other Canadian cities grappling with controversial social challenges. The city, having recently moved to regulate cannabis dispensaries and, a dozen years ago, opening North America’s first legal supervised injection drug site, has created templates for other municipalities that now want to deploy harm-reduction strategies to deal with the scourge of drugs.

Such strategies are not borne of defiance against federal drug policies but rather a pursuit of pragmatism, to ensure if drug use was going to continue — as it surely was — its harmful effects would be mitigated and remediated.

The focus in regulating marijuana dispensaries is on ensuring these outlets — which number close to 100 — do not situate themselves near schools or community centres. Another aim is to give the city necessary funds, through dispensary licensing fees, to provide appropriate oversight.

Victoria, with 19 dispensaries and compassion clubs, says it will look to the Vancouver model as it prepares to introduce its regulatory system in September.

Vancouver’s launching of Insite in the Downtown Eastside in 2003 was based on a desire to reduce the number of back-alley deaths resulting from drug overdoses. The facility receives more than 700 visits a day from drug users and 2009 records show nearly 500 overdoses occurred that year with no deaths, thanks to the intervention of Insite staff.

Montreal now is planning for four supervised injection sites to be operating by fall, regardless of whether the federal government grants the city a special Health Canada exemption that would make the operation legal.

Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre says he is not prepared to delay the initiative, because it is urgent. About 25 drug users died of overdoses in the city in 2014.

It appears cities increasingly want to treat these issues as health problems, which fall under provincial jurisdiction, while Stephen Harper’s Conservative government continues to view them from a criminal justice perspective.

Vancouver has faced repeated legal challenges and warnings from Ottawa. But, to its credit, the city has determinedly pursued its course, gaining local community approval for its actions along the way. These days Vancouver is being cited as a model for similar action by other municipalities.

The governing party has used the debate to highlight political differences with its partisan opponents. The Harper team has characterized the regulation of cannabis dispensaries and operation of Insite as challenges to federal law. They are attempting to demonize the Liberals, who advocate a liberalization of pot laws, and playing to the Conservative party’s law-and-order base.

None of that is likely to help Conservatives win new votes in Vancouver in a fall election.