Safe injection site breaks treaties, UN agency says

Source: Vancouver Sun

Federal health minister will be urged to shut down initiatives
Steven Edwards, with files from Darah Hansen, CanWest News Service; with files from Vancouver Sun
Published: Friday, March 02, 2007

UNITED NATIONS -- The United Nations drug control agency is expected to warn Health Minister Tony Clement at a conference later this month that Canada is flouting international drug control treaties by enabling illicit drug use at a supervised injection site in Vancouver.

Clement will be urged to shut down the initiative, which the agency says effectively condones the use of drugs that Canada has agreed in an international forum are banned substances outside prescription.

"In a way, [Canada] is encouraging illicit trafficking," Zhu Li-Qin, chief of the Convention Evaluation Section of the UN's International Narcotics Control Board, said in an interview from the agency's headquarters in Vienna, Austria.

"Traffickers are searching for markets, and a [supervised site] serves as a small market where people go and legally inject drugs."

Officials will notify Clement of the board's findings through established contacts at Health Canada and directly to a Canadian delegation at the annual meeting of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna March 12-16.

Article Four of the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs says countries will pass laws to make sure drugs are used only for medical and scientific purposes.

"Generally, in international law, when you sign a treaty, you are supposed to conform both your domestic legislation and your domestic behaviour to the obligations you have under the treaty," said Melvyn Levitsky, a retired U.S. ambassador on the board.

"Although we understand the compulsion behind these sites, the convention says drugs are supposed to be used for medical or scientific purposes -- not for getting public nuisances off the streets."

Other countries facing board criticism for operating supervised injection sites are Australia, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Switzerland.

"The board regrets that no measures have been taken to terminate the operation of such facilities in the countries concerned," says the report.

The board noted in its 2003 report that the Canadian government, then under the Liberals, had approved the establishment of the Vancouver facility, called Insite, and billed as a "safe, health-focused place where people can go to inject drugs."

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See also : UN report unwittingly makes the case for prescribing drugs to addicts, Vancouver Sun, published March 3

and Safe injection site illegal, says UN, Today's family news, March 7