After a 33-7 vote yesterday, Toronto City Council endorsed the Vienna Declaration, a document that denounces the war on drugs, the National Post reports.

The declaration favours public health responses to drugs instead of enforcement.

“The war against drugs has failed. In every jurisdiction and in every community, we know that policing this issue is not enough,” said gaybourhood councillor Kyle Rae.

Last year, controversy erupted during a Toronto safe consumption site feasibility study when Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he planned to shut down a Vancouver safe injection site.

The Vienna Declaration aims to end all that.

“The criminalization of illicit drug users is fuelling the HIV epidemic and has resulted in overwhelmingly negative health and social consequences. A full policy reorientation is needed.”

Approving the Vienna Declaration does not necessarily mean Toronto will have its own safe consumption site, says Councillor Gord Perks and Toronto Drug Strategy board chairperson.

“It’s a declaration, not a prescription. It would simply reinforce the existing Toronto Drug Strategy. For example, Public Health workers already hand out safe crack kits to prevent the spread of hepatitis and have numerous other programs for drug users,” says Perks.

In 2007, Shawn Syms wrote that embracing harm reduction could revitalize queer politics:

Law-enforcement officials will tell you drugs like crack are illegal because they're harmful to users and society. But the reverse is even more true — some drug use is harmful specifically because of the fact that it's against the law.

For instance, needle use can lead to many more health problems than inhaling a substance — such as abscesses, endocarditis (a potentially fatal heart infection) and a greater risk of overdose and death. But if you can be arrested for getting high, many people will choose the route least likely to be detected — and shooting up generates no telltale smoke or odours.

One of the biggest harms of all associated with addictive drugs is their economic cost. It's easy to link illicit drug use and criminal acts such as theft — after all, both are considered morally suspect in the public imagination. But most addicts wouldn't steal if illegal drugs — produced and distributed via underground economies fraught with risk — were not so unfairly expensive. In this way, drug laws set up a cycle of incarceration that wouldn't otherwise exist.

COMPILED BY NEIL MCKINNON

There was word from Vienna today that a group of about 50 activists staged a die-in and shut down the Canadian booth in the exhibition hall at the International AIDS Conference yesterday.

The protest came in response to the Harper government's ongoing refusal to support safe injection sites and other harm reduction measures adopted by the Vienna Declaration. Harper's delegates refused to sign the declaration on Monday.

"Given that some of the recommendations outlined in the Vienna Declaration are inconsistent with Canada's National Anti-Drug Strategy and current federal drug policy, Canada will not support the document," Charlene Wiles, of the Public Health Agency of Canada, wrote in an email, according to the CBC.

Chanting, "The war on drugs is a war on us! Support harm reduction now," the activists wrapped the Canadian booth in tape and covered it in signs and copies of the Vienna Declaration. 

"Canada has missed an important opportunity to show leadership in the struggle against HIV and AIDS," Canadian harm reduction activist Zoe Dodd said in a press release. "There is overwhelming evidence that harm reduction strategies are effective in combatting HIV transmission. Canadian criminalization of drug use is fanning the flames of the AIDS epidemic."

Xtra's correspondent at the conference, Phillip Banks, says a gay activist from Toronto was expelled from the conference for destroying the Canadian booth's banners.

(Photo by Daniel Grace)  

Controversial questions abound (all of it NSFW)!  What do you think on today's issues:

You've got to admire the awesome gall of Wall Street bankers who ruin their companies, get bailout money from the government, give it to their failed leaders in bonuses, and then whine to the New York Times about how poverty-stricken they are!  Could you get by on only $500,000 a year?  I suppose I'd have to stoop to buying Starbucks instead of paying my flock of Colombian boys to roast coffee beans in my condo...

An advisory council is about to deliver a report to the UK Home Office urging that ecstasy be downgraded from its current, highest criminal category. The report was originally due last week but the researchers couldn't stop making out with one another.

I prayed we were done making fun of Christian Bale's meltdown and little David's drugged-out trip home from the dentist but some sick genius fused the two together!  Is he hero or madman?

Two performers mysteriously absent from last night's Grammy Awards were Rihanna and her boyfriend Chris Brown, who turned himself in to police earlier that day on a domestic violence charge (either Rihanna or some other woman, police won't say). Sad stories like these just prove why we must save people from the sick and destructive lifestyle of heterosexuality.

Excommunicated Bishop Richard Williamson has been welcomed back into the Catholic Church, provided he renounces his claim that the Holocaust never happened. Despite his regret at the "distress" he's caused the Pope with his views, Williamson refuses, saying he needs "proof" that the systematic murder of Jews, gypsies and homosexuals truly happened. Well, Bishop Williamson, allow me to show you inside this gas oven over here...

Remember when US pundits were debating whether Barack Obama was black enough?  I bet these soundbites from his audiobook make them feel silly now:

"Milk" writer Dustin Lance Black won the Best Screenplay award at this weekend's Writers Guild of America awards. Black says Harvey Milk inspired him to write and urged the gay community to re-energize ourselves and fight for equality. Dude, I would totally like to but "Project Runway" is on!

But the one thing we can't debate is that the Pet Shop Boys are back with a new single and they're completely right:  you need more love!

Have truer words ever been spoken?  Everybody loves David after the dentist:

Well, maybe not everybody -- some of the Boing Boing commentators are crying exploitation but please, get a grip, people.  After all, there's a website called "Preteen Child Model Land" (that will I NOT be linking to) out there.

Strange how it's the little things that can be so controversial.  People are still talking about the recording of Christian Bale's on-the-set freakout and, more importantly, making fun of it!  There's the Christian Bale Soundboard to let you play your favourite bits of profanity and, of course, the NSFW Dance Remix:

The Guardian newspaper is upset at Morrissey's choice of sleeve art for his new single:

I'm just sad those are 7" records, not 12, but "I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris" is a terrific song.

Need news of the catfight between Hilary Duff and Faye Dunaway?  Of course you do.

Actress Vivica A. Fox is trying to duck controversy over her decision to sell out and join the Psychic Friends Network.  She hilariously claims that they did it all without her permission (well, they ARE psychic) even though there's video of her ad!

Remember how, last week, I said I was done writing about the crazy sexuality of Ted Haggard?  That was before the even crazier revelations about his sexuality.  Offering up his daughter for marriage to the young guy he wants to plow?  That's controversial!

But for a topic truly worthy of coffee talk, we can mull over the Swedish HIV study that claims that HIV-negative guys who perform oral sex on their positive partners develop antibodies that make them immune to their partner's particular strain of HIV.  There's a catch, warns Elizabeth Pisani, but it's all certainly fascinating -- even more controversial than Hilary Duff!