Jon Ferry
Photograph by: Graphics, The Province
Vancouver may be the world's third-most-livable city, according to the latest
Economist magazine survey, but it sure has one helluva drug problem.
That's not news to those who've come to know the seedy underbelly of our spaced-out port city. It's been like that for years.
So
the finding by the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS that buying
illegal drugs in downtown Vancouver is as easy as going to the nearest
supermarket is no surprise either.
Most younger and older drug
users surveyed in the centre's latest, taxpayer-funded study said they
could obtain everything from heroin and crack cocaine to crystal meth
and pot within minutes — 10 minutes, to be precise.
"Perhaps most
concerning is the ready availability of drugs that are injected," noted
the researchers, who hail from Vancouver and Boston.
Talk about
stating the obvious. The open market for drugs in downtown Vancouver,
and the horrific social problems it causes, has been a public concern
for years.
The question is what to do about it. And the inference in this study — published in the
American Journal on Addictions
and based on user responses from 2007 — is that the American-style war
on drugs, with its emphasis on drug-law enforcement, has been an abject
failure.
Indeed, it's clear the drug policy advocated instead by
the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS itself is "harm reduction,"
focusing on everything from safe-injection sites to drug legalization.
This
is, in fact, the politically correct approach that's been in vogue in
Vancouver's drug-riddled downtown for years — without apparent effect.
And study co-author Dr. Evan Wood, a Vancouver physician, is an eloquent
champion of it.
"Despite enormous taxpayer investments in
enforcing laws aimed at reducing the supply of illegal drugs, Canada's
streets remain awash in heroin and cocaine," he stated recently in the
National Post.
"Meanwhile,
designer drugs such as ecstasy are becoming more readily available to
young people than alcohol and tobacco. The war on drugs, like all
expensive government programs, should be subject to scrutiny and a
value-for-money audit. However, so far, it has been remarkably exempt
from accountability."
It could equally well be argued, however,
that the main reason why the illegal drug trade continues to flourish in
the Lower Mainland like a foul-smelling weed is not because of too much
law enforcement, but too little.
The B.C. justice system is notoriously soft on drugs and drug offenders, as at least one sentencing study has shown.
Just
ask former Lower Mainland RCMP officer Chuck Doucette, president of the
Drug Prevention Network of Canada: "There's never been a war on drugs
in Canada, not even close."
It could also be argued that the
laissez-faire attitude of our civic leaders toward the government-funded
Downtown Eastside drug ghetto has done as least as much to turn
troubled/homeless teens into hard-core addicts as have any overzealous
police drug crackdowns.
Besides, as former Downtown Eastside beat
cop Al Arsenault pointed out Thursday, Vancouver should not be setting
drug policy: "Whatever we're doing here is not working."
Maybe Wood and his research team should be studying those cities around the world where it is.
jferry@theprovince.com
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