SALOME a New, Old Solution?
Photo Credit: lovetoknow

The dispensing of heroin by SALOME in Vancouver, although controversial by North American standards, is currently in use in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Australia and has been well demonstrated as successful in a 1995 Liverpool test story. The dispensation of heroin and cocaine in Liverpool was a benchmark case study with startling results in aggravated crime reduction, reduction in property crime, reductions in high use neighbourhood violence, and addict deaths. Not only did the study see reductions in the negative results of addiction, the program also saw increased addict treatment, increased social integration of addicted persons and increased recovery rates. The Chapel Street Program, an anathema to the U.S. war on drugs and the newly chosen path of our current Prime Minister despite attitudes of Canadians in recent polls, shines a clear and brilliant light on a problem that drug criminalization has failed to resolve or abate.

The Chapel Street Clinic in Widnes (a suburb of Liverpool) run by Dr. John Marks until 1995 was the most famous holdout for the old British system of “free drug maintenance,” ended through legislation in 1968. The incredible success of this small Liverpool clinic had been a stark contrast to the documented failure of the other internal and external alternatives. The U.S. government had of course maintained constant pressure on the British government to shut down this glaring example of an approach that flew in the face of American drug war orthodoxy.

The situation became critical following a CBS “60 Minutes” broadcast on the clinic. The facts in this story completely debased fundamental U.S. policy assumptions. The most startling statistic was the crime rate. The local police began a parallel program tracking the criminal records of 112 addicts who entered the drug maintenance program at Chapel Street. According to the Cheshire Drug Squad, there was a 93 percent drop in theft, burglary, and property crimes among this group over the next two years, thus illuminating the age-old argument about whether it is the drugs themselves or the pursuit of drugs that drives addicts to criminal behaviour. In addition, the HIV infection rate among these injecting drug users was zero. Zero. And the incidence of death among addicts, normally 15 percent per year, was also zero.

Even more significant was the fact that the incidence of new drug users in the Widnes-Holton area dropped dramatically, contrary to popular assumptions. Drug dealers simply stayed away because they knew the local addicts didn’t need them anymore. And the addicts themselves had no reason to sell drugs since they could get whatever they needed for nothing.

The “60 Minutes” broadcast and subsequent worldwide media attention was such a terrible embarrassment to the conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher, John Major, and their American allies, that the program’s funding was pulled in 1995 led by pressure from the U.S. government. The British government, prohibited from attacking the program based on the informational merits, attacked the clinic on the basis of economics, saying that heroin maintenance was too expensive and that Methadone was a far more cost effective method. A one- year supply of heroin cost the clinic 10,000 pounds, where Methadone cost 500 pounds. And why did a synthetic drug cost less than the natural product? Because a single British pharmaceutical company, it was later revealed through freedom of information, had been granted a heroin monopoly and were able to charge the National Health Service whatever they wanted for the product. By closing the program, the British were also able to avoid the embarrassment of government methadone treatment centres in England constantly being negatively compared with a system quickly proven to be far more effective.

British National Health Service (NHS) was forced to pay about 10 pounds for a gram of heroin under the monopoly, but for an addict with a prescription it was free. NHS maintained strict control over product purity noting that it was “not” heroin that was causing the physical damage to addicts, nor the systemic illness. The rampant illness within addict communities was being caused because of the bread dust, coffee, crushed bleach crystals and other impurities and cutting agents infecting street heroin. The facts are that if heroin is 90% adulterated, as most street heroin is, that means only 10% is heroin, the rest being rubbish. If you inject unknown impurities into your veins, you don’t have to be a medical expert to work it out – that’s going to cause ilness and harm to the user.

In a valedictory condemnation of the Home Office and Department of Health, Bing Spear, the former Chief Inspector of the Government’s Drugs Inspectorate, said that a 1968 policy change, which ended the unique “British system” of allowing doctors to keep patients away from dealers by giving them hard drugs, had been an “unmitigated disaster”.

A report, written by Cleveland Chief Constable Barry Straw, criticized British drug policy as “ineffective” and “clearly based upon American experience.” “There is overwhelming evidence to show that the prohibition-based policy in place in this country since 1971 has not been effective in controlling the use or availability of proscribed drugs,” wrote Straw. “If there is indeed a war on drugs, it is not being won; drugs are demonstrably cheaper and more readily available than ever before. It seems that the laws of supply and demand are operating in textbook fashion. If a sufficiently large (and apparently growing) part of the population chooses to ignore the law for whatever reason, then that law becomes unenforceable. A modern Western democracy, based on policing by consent and the rule of law, may find itself powerless to prevent illegal importation and use of controlled drugs.” After citing links between drug prohibition and both street crime and organized crime, Straw went on to list a number of policy conclusions:

1. Attempts to restrict availability of illegal drugs have failed so far, everywhere. There is little or no evidence that they can ever work within acceptable means in a democratic society.

2. Demand for drugs seems still to be growing, locally and nationally. The market seems to be some way from saturation.

3. There is little evidence that conventional conviction and punishment has any effect on offending levels.

4. There is some evidence that social attitudes can be changed over time, by design. The best example available to date is drunk-driving, but success has taken a generation to achieve.

“If prohibition does not work”, Straw went on to say, “then either the consequences of this have to be accepted, or an alternative approach must be found”. “The most obvious alternative approach is the legalization and subsequent regulation of some or all drugs. Prescribing heroin was standard British practice through the 1960s, and it was credited with keeping the number of addicts low. In 1971, there were 500 addicts, the Telegraph reported; now, after three decades of drug war, there are 500,000″.

Today Britain, The Netherlands, Switzerland and Australia have embarked on heroin dependant prescription programs with Israel and a multitude of E.U. jurisdictions are now reviewing current programs or participating in studies. The war on drugs is ending, as it must, and the U.S. led coalition army on prohibition is fragmenting in the face of dismal failure. Crime, violence and public safety must be the primary and only concern of government. A long term holistic and generational education approach must be taken on drugs for success.

Vancouver is moving in the only reasonable direction. Removing the cost of addiction and the criminality from drugs removes the criminal enterprise and reduces sky rocketing court costs, police costs, gang violence, jail overcrowding, the downtown east side experience, increased medical costs, the inability of the current system to solve drug use and the billions of tax dollars not being collected in soft drugs like pot that can actually benefit the system.

I am not a drug proponent; I do not use drugs nor advocate their use. I do not, however, advocate stupidity either and the prohibition and criminalization of drugs has proven to be exactly that. Judging the personal choices of free Canadians is not the providence of the government as long as they do not affect the safety of others. Gambling and liquor sales are only the first examples to model. The war on drugs has proven not only to be wasteful, but contrary to the safety of the public which is and must be the government’s primary responsibility. This program is a bold first step down a new path in Canada which can only be viewed with promise because “if you do what you’ve always done you’re going to get what you’ve always got.”

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This entry was posted on Sunday, January 3rd, 2010 at 4:51 pm and is filed under Crime, Federal Government. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.