AIDS Action Now released a video tonight, on the eve of World AIDS Day, calling for the federal government to recommit to the fight against AIDS and hepatitis C in Canada. In the new video, the group condemns the Harper government for "refusing to address this national healthcare crisis."

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)