Mixed messages on drugs imperils kids

Re: No easy answer to addiction, letters, Feb. 4; and Get addicts off drugs, editorial, Jan. 28.

So B.C. Health Minister Terry Lake takes “great exception” to The Sun’s editorial assertion that harm reduction policies “send the message that it’s OK to be a drug addict.” Unfortunately, his subsequent discussion is a reiteration of the rationale for harm reduction, not a refutation of The Sun’s assertion.

Any state action that makes it easier to belong to the drug culture cannot but send a message that is at odds with the deadly danger there. Many claim irrefutable evidence of a net benefit in harm-reduction initiatives, but none of their studies have considered the softening of public attitude pointed out by The Sun.

If one in a hundred kids gets hooked on drugs now, and a mixed drug-use message from society changes that ratio ever so slightly to two in a hundred, there will be many more new recruits slipping into the swamp than our policies have ever managed to drag out.

This is not a convenient fact to incorporate into drug-response strategy, but The Sun has correctly identified it as one that anyone who truly cares cannot responsibly ignore. Richard D. Estey, New Westminster