Canada's Anti-Drug Plan Fails To Address Harm Reduction

While welcoming new funds for addictions treatment, researchers at the University of Victoria-based Centre for Addictions Research of BC (CARBC) are disappointed that the new $64-million anti-drug plan fails to support harm reduction strategies and narrowly focuses on illicit drugs when alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceutical drugs cause most of the harms to individuals and society. Recent estimates from a World Health Organization data set found that in developed countries like Canada alcohol contributed to 31.5 per cent of deaths of males aged 15 to 29 years compared with only 3.9 per cent for illicit drugs. Today’s policy statement implies that supporting harm reduction risks undermines efforts to promote abstinence from substance use.

“The scientific evidence points in an entirely different direction—these strategies not only save health and law enforcement dollars, they improve the health of drug users and encourage the uptake of treatment programs including those focusing on abstinence,” says CARBC director and UVic psychology professor Dr. Tim Stockwell.

“Harm reduction strategies such as needle exchanges and safe injection sites have been proven to reduce the spread of Hepatitis C and HIV among injecting drug users and hence the wider community,” adds Stockwell. Trials of prescribed heroin to heavily dependent users have been shown to retain users in treatment more effectively than other approaches while reducing their involvement in crime and improving their health. Harm reduction is in the public interest and will not undermine other prevention or treatment efforts.”

There is also a danger that encouraging the enforcement of criminal sanctions against cannabis use will unnecessarily criminalize large sectors of Canadian society says Stockwell. Recent evidence that smoking cannabis is now more common than smoking tobacco suggests that a public health rather than a purely law enforcement approach can be a more effective preventative strategy. The 2004 Canadian Addiction Survey found that 29 per cent of 15 to 17 year olds and almost half of 18 and 19 year olds reported past year cannabis use, substantially higher than the 14 per cent to 27 per cent range found for past year tobacco use in various other Canadian surveys.

Finally, almost 90 per cent of death, injury and illness due to substance use in Canada is associated with the use of tobacco and alcohol. “A comprehensive national strategy needs to address all harmful types of substance use and, in particular, those causing the most harm to individuals and society,” says Stockwell.

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