The safe crack-use kit comes in a small brown paper bag, roughly the same size as the bags used by the people who rescue the songbirds that stun themselves by flying into the windows of our tall towers.

A metaphor there, somewhere.

The contents of the kit include a tiny aluminum pan in which to prepare the drug; the handle of the pan is made of orange plastic.

The kit also comes with a glass pipe, a single wooden chopstick with which to clean it, two alcohol swabs, and a small black sleeve containing five little screens.

The kits are gender specific, containing either a male or a female condom. Why a condom? Because sex and drugs are the horse and carriage of the hard life: rare to find one without the other.

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There is another kind of kit.

It is the safe drug-injection kit, and it is delivered in the same sort of bag. The contents include a pair of needles. It is good to be generous with needles because to share a needle is to risk sharing a disease.

The safe injection kit also comes with a couple of alcohol swabs, some cotton balls, three little tubules of sterile water, two packets of lubricant and, yes, condoms.

About needles: I once spent several weeks spiking myself in the hip. I’d had a knee operation, and I developed a blood clot in my leg, and I was injecting the meds myself, as part of a trial.

I can assure you that, while I am adept at hip injection, I have no interest in any injections, anywhere, any more; the thought of it, even now, makes me ill.

I am deeply puzzled by addiction.

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There are days when I would like to sweep all of my responsibilities off the table and fall into sweet relief. Thing is, I know there is no such thing as sweet relief.

Rather than reach for a phantom, I tend to wait until the feeling passes because I am steeped in the notion that, if I give in, even for a moment, I will lose whatever ground I have gained.

That’s just me.

There are very good reasons why this city’s public health department supplies safe crack use kits, and safe drug injection kits. People will always use drugs, and they do not always do so safely, which means users risk getting ill, or passing their illnesses to others.

In 2010, this city distributed one million needles and 194,000 glass crack pipes, and there were 75,000 visits to needle exchange sites, all for a mere $2 million.

There is no estimate available for the lives saved, or the illnesses prevented. But lifelong AIDS treatment is expensive, and what’s a life worth?

The supply of safe drug-use kits favours progressives like me — I can’t abide needless suffering — just as it should favour social conservatives who don’t like to spend any more tax money than is necessary.

Because as much as we do not like to admit it, there is simply no way to stop some people from using drugs. How then could it possibly be wrong to save a life and save a health-care dollar at the same time?

If we cannot stop drug use, then why would we not want, at the very least, to protect people caught in the grips of addiction?

Are we not human? Do we not have compassion for our fellows? Is it not a social good to prevent needless suffering? Is it not worth our while to keep people as healthy as possible, in the hope or the knowledge that they might kick their habit one day?

This is harm reduction.

We ought to be familiar with the concept if we are ever to have a reasonable discussion about such things as needles in prison, or safe-injection sites in Toronto.