I'm in BC for the weekend and the big news in today's northern newspapers is good news—the Supreme Court of Canada has bucked the conservative government and defended Insite, a safe-injection clinic in Vancouver.

This was unusual (or so the newspapers tell me) because the Supreme Court has a reputation for "acceding to the will of Parliament." And though the decision directly addresses a tiny, tiny sliver of Canada's population—the IV drug users of Vancouver who inject at Insite—the court's unanimous ruling is a big, big victory for all of North America's harm-reduction community, and those who think that criminalizing drug use does more far more harm than good.

Take it away, Globe and Mail:

The Supreme Court grounded its decision in the Charter right to life, liberty and security of the person. It said that the government cannot simply withdraw the exemption from prosecution, jeopardizing medical staff and users based on its distaste for legally sanctioned drug injections.

"Insite has saved lives and improved health," Chief Justice McLachlin said. "And it did those things without increasing the incidence of drug use and crime in the surrounding area. The Vancouver police support Insite. The city and provincial government want it to stay open.

The papers are also full of great corollary stories about addiction in general, the shifting winds of Canada's drug policy, and the conservative mayor of Vancouver who championed Insite because he refused to let ideology trump facts.

And this story, about a neurologist with an impressive drug history of his own who is studying addiction and the brain, is especially good:

But a cure for addiction may be impossible. If Marc Lewis is right, and addictive tendencies are as universal as he suggests, there is no such thing as an addict: There are only more and less extreme cases of neurological longing. Desire – the foundation of human choice, as rationalism would have it, and therefore of human dignity – is actually most of what we are, as human beings.

Because of the way cortical dopamine works, the prospect of feeling better (the thought of that dose, that hamburger) is even more motivating than the reward. Anticipation is all. As Dr. Lewis points out, if you block the dopamine receptors of a hungry rat sitting in front of a pile of food, it won't eat. “It says, ‘Yeah, I'm hungry, but so what?' So we need these systems to drive us to pursue any goal.”

... these are not new findings, but, as the scientific foundation for the detailed memoirs of a former drug addict, they sharpen our understanding of why we do what we shouldn't.

The article is especially recommended for those who argue that because addiction is an ugly thing, we should keep up our policies of prohibition.

Read the whole thing here.