Clergy for a New Drug Policy

Pastor Sharp, a longtime activist on social-justice fronts, describes successful programs like Vancouver’s Insite, the first legal, supervised “injection” center, where addicts come for clean needles, at least minimal medical care, company, counsel, and steps toward new lives—something the policy of imprisonment almost never has done. In Vancouver, the drop-ins at Insite are observed by experts to minimize injury as they shoot up. Then the visitors go from stalls to a lounge area, then to a detox unit, and often to an 18-bed, long-term recovery unit. Sharp reports on the spread of experiments to other cities, and notes that there are significant declines in recidivism where these Insite-type efforts are made.