Tony Clement is taking heat again for his increasingly indefensible antipathy toward Insite, this time for apparently discouraging research into the safe-injection facility even as he purported to want more of it.
This being a bit of a pet issue, I’m inclined to go off on Clement. But since others already have that covered, I’ll move things along a bit with a curious side-story from the same International Journal of Drug Policy article that goes after Clement (not yet available online, as far as I can tell):
“It is also interesting that the national police force, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), has funded several reviews of SIF [safe injection site] research. Interestingly, when the first two reviews … suggested that SIF are likely a useful tool to reduce drug-related harm,” the RCMP issues a press release in an effort to distance itself from the conclusions of those reviews. They subsequently funded a known anti-harm-reduction activist to prepare a third review. This review was recently placed on a website funded by the Drug Free America Foundation and operated by the Institute on Global Drug Policy. Neither of these organizations is a scientific body…”
I’m never entirely comfortable with police forces or their leaders wading uninvited into social policy debates. But attempting to manipulate those debates toward their preferred outcome in the manner the Journal alleges takes it to a whole other level, doesn’t it?
