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The Vancouver Coastal Health authority has been testing the health benefits of giving crack cocaine users smoking kits. Between December 2011 and November 2012, 65,000 such kits were freely distributed in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, to 4,213 crack smokers, at a cost of $118,000 CDN, according to a several reports, including this Vancouver Courier item. Now they're crunching the numbers and looking at the results.

Vancouver Coastal Health is telling the media that the 13 month program met it's harm reduction goals, reducing both burns to crack smokers, and reliance on used smoking equipment -- without increasing drug activity.

Knee-jerk conservatives may blanch at what they see as another example of lefties enabling the druggie lifestyle, but that couldn't be farther from the truth. "Harm reduction" means reducing the harm drug users do to themselves, and -- this is an important point -- reducing the harm drug users do to the society at large. Reducing the sharing of drug-taking equipment, is meant to have far-reaching social benefits:

• Reducing the transmission of infectious diseases among drug users.


• Reducing the number of drug addicts who become chronic health care cases,


• Reducing the risk of drug users spreading infectious diseases to the general population.