Fools rush in where angels fear to tread Playing God with Vancouver's Supervised Injection Facility in the political borderland

Abstract

Healthcare does not exist in a social vacuum. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the case of people living with active addiction who are treated as social lepers: feared, despised and socially banished from the wider human family. People with addictions, and their families, fight for survival in the moral borderland between two competing understandings of their condition. According to one understanding, addiction is a concern for the criminal justice system while according to the other it is primarily a population health issue. In one orientation, addicts are troublesome offenders, while in the other they are wounded persons in need of medical attention. These competing values form a cultural web of belief that extends far beyond healthcare to the highest political office of Canadian society. This paper examines the politics of addiction over a 6-year period beginning at the municipal level in Vancouver and culminating with a confrontation between the Prime Minister of Canada and the tiny neighbourhood that provides a home for North America's only Supervised Injection Facility. Not wanting to let the medical facts get in the way of a political stand, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Health Minister, Tony Clement, played God this summer by playing politics with the lives of people in the shadows of Canadian society.