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Our Conservative government has worked long and hard to establish itself as the party that’s tough on crime — tough on drugs, especially. So it’s been fascinating to watch the Tories squirm as the Rob Ford fiasco continues, against all odds, to get worse.

At this point, the message the Conservatives are sending appears to be, “Do as I say, not as I do.” Rona Ambrose, federal health minister, didn’t help things much with her statement last week.

“It is a touchy subject only because none of us want to pass judgment on someone who is going through a very difficult time,” Ambrose said of Rob Ford — only a few weeks after she announced a policy that makes some pretty tough judgments of people going through their own struggles with addiction.

Sometimes, conventional medical treatments or therapies don’t work to treat a given condition. In Canada, our government’s response has been to create the Special Access Programme, an initiative which permits doctors to provide their patients with unmarketed drugs when serious or life-threatening conditions aren’t responding to normal treatment.

In principle, the Special Access Programme is a great example of flexibility and compassion in government. It provides an exception for people who are suffering badly, and who would otherwise slip through the cracks of our medical system.

Last month, though, Ambrose announced that the program would no longer be permitted to provide certain drugs — including a drug called diacetylmorphine.

Diacetylmorphine is the active ingredient in heroin, which is the main reason Conservatives are so jumpy about it. But diacetylmorphine isn’t what you’d get if you bought heroin from a dealer on the street. In the United Kingdom, diacetylmorphine is prescribed as a treatment for acute pain; it’s used, for example, as a post-operative painkiller for women recovering from caesarian sections, and as a palliative care treatment.

More important for us in Canada, diacetylmorphine has been shown to be a highly effective part of treatment for heroin addicts.

We’ve seen awkward silences, vague expressions of hope that Ford will voluntarily seek treatment, or choked-up public statements like the one from Jim Flaherty. Apparently it’s only when the addict is a personal friend that Conservative politicians are willing to empathize.

Treating heroin addiction often involves what’s called “replacement therapy” — substituting another, less harmful drug for heroin. Methadone is commonly used in replacement therapy but, for some severe heroin addicts, it just doesn’t work. That’s where diacetylmorphine comes in.

In comparing the effectiveness of methadone to diacetylmorphine, diacetylmorphine replacement therapy can keep nearly 30 per cent more participants in treatment than the same therapy using methadone. Moreover, the social cost of diacetylmorphine replacement therapy may actually be substantially lower than the social costs of methadone therapy.

But it seems that’s all irrelevant to the federal government. Rather than trusting the judgment of doctors who know their patients’ cases intimately — the people we trust to prescribe any other potentially risky medication — the Conservatives have decided to step in and issue a blanket ban on a treatment that, for the people relying on it, could well be the difference between living and dying.

In late October, when speaking to the issue, Ambrose said, “the prime minister and I do not believe we are serving the best interests of those addicted to drugs and those who need our help the most by giving them the very drugs they are addicted to.”

The problem with Ambrose’s stance is that the issue here isn’t a matter of belief — it’s a matter of evidence. The evidence says that for some people, the best — perhaps the only — help available is through safe access to the very drugs to which they are addicted. Addiction is an illness, and treating illnesses usually works better when we use the best medicine available. Trying to shame patients into getting better is far less effective.

And this, in a roundabout way, brings us back to Rob Ford. Because when it comes to old friends, it seems like the Conservative rules on drug use are a bit different.

Certainly not all Tories have been outspoken members of Ford Nation like Conservative MP Parm Gill, who said on Halloween that Ford “is a great mayor”. Instead, we’ve seen awkward silences, vague expressions of hope that Ford will voluntarily seek treatment, or choked-up public statements like the one from Jim Flaherty. Apparently it’s only when the addict is a personal friend that Conservative politicians are willing to empathize.

It’s not acceptable for our policy makers to treat some drug users with compassion and not others. A consistent position would require the Conservatives to cut Ford loose entirely — but what this debacle has shown is how difficult it can be to hold with zero-tolerance principles when addiction hits closer to home.

It may be too much to hope that Ford’s ongoing public struggles with addiction force his supporters in the House of Commons to ask themselves some hard questions about their own stances on drug use. Regardless, those questions need to be asked — because there’s no good explanation for why the Conservatives refuse to condemn Ford, but are perfectly happy to take treatment options away from addicts trying to get better.

Devon Black is studying law at the University of Victoria. In addition to writing for iPolitics, Devon has worked for the Canadian International Development Agency, Leadership Africa USA and RamRais & Partners.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.