Pubdate: Sat, 02 Dec 2000
Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC)
Copyright: The Vancouver Sun 2000
Contact:  200 Granville Street, Ste.#1, Vancouver BC V6C 3N3
Fax: (604) 605-2323
Website: http://www.vancouversun.com/
Author: Frances Bula, and Chris Nuttall-Smith, Vancouver Sun
Series: Searching for solutions - Fix on the Downtown Eastside
http://www.mapinc.org/thefix.htm
Also: As of 24 Nov 2000 the draft plan may be found at:
http://www.city.vancouver.bc.ca/

SOUNDS LIKE A PLAN

Reaction Is Favourable To The Mayor's Strategy On Drugs And The
Downtown Eastside -- But It's Not Unanimous.

Vancouver's 31-point plan to combat its drug problems -- both the open
drug market and the epidemic of death, disease and addiction -- has
not gone unnoticed. The city has given out more than 1,000 copies of
its report and received an uncounted number of hits on its Web sites.
About 50 people have already submitted formal responses to the city,
with the preponderance being from the medical community. Here at The
Vancouver Sun, the letters continue to pour in, from Switzerland, from
San Francisco and from right here in the city.

The responses range from praise for the city's plan to complaints that
the city is just creating a comfort zone where addicts can get stoned
all day to suggestions that all addicts be shipped off to desert islands.

That kind of response prompted another kind, from the distressed
parents who have an addicted child.

"I was sad to see that a lot of letters showed a total lack of
compassion for those suffering from addiction," wrote one. "I guess
you have to be touched by one to understand. I know I've been told to
walk away and forget him. How can you do that to one who stroked your
hair while you nursed him? Or collected pop cans from the school
garbage so he could buy you a rose? ... I guess it's like knowing two
people. My son, and the addict."

Having had almost two weeks to ponder the city's report, this is what
people with a vital interest in this problem had to say:

Darcy Rezac, A Representative Of The Vancouver Board Of Trade, Which Has
Been Pushing The City For Several Years To Do Something About The City's
Rampant Crime And Drug Problems.

"I think the whole strategy is a bold one and a very enlightened one
and we're very supportive of what the mayor is doing.

"You really have to give the mayor credit for taking on what is a huge
problem, head-on in a pro-active way.

"It's a problem in Vancouver that we can't ignore."

Rezac says his members have a variety of viewpoints about which of the
31 recommendations or four pillars they favour.

"We lean more towards being firm on abuse and firm on sentencing, but
shy of providing an enabling sort of atmosphere in Vancouver which
could attract others here."

In general, they have been most concerned about what they see as a
tendency by B.C. judges to give light sentences in drug cases. The
report doesn't say anything about sentencing, but Rezac says that's
fine, since Mayor Philip Owen has been so vocal about it.

In spite of reservations about creating an "enabling" environment,
Rezac says, the business community is ready to support anything that
it believes will work, including the controversial safe-injection
rooms. "I think at this point people are prepared to look at good
science and good research and see what works. Our members are prepared
to take a pragmatic approach."

Werner Schneider, Former Drug Policy Coordinator For Frankfurt, Now In
Charge Of Evaluating That City's Drug Strategies.

"I think it's excellent. Whether the city will go that far or not, it
shows the whole direction."

Schneider says the plan very much resembles a draft plan that
Frankfurt came up with in 1991, a year before it started putting
policy into action. "There were one, two, three months of discussion
and it was very controversial. Then after three months, we came out
with a final paper."

It wasn't until November 1992 that the city was ready to move into
action, clearing out the central park that had become the gathering
point for dealers and users, and moving addicts to a drug-resource
centre the city had set up.

Schneider says what Vancouver needs to do at this point is form
alliances with other cities also trying progressive approaches. "You
need the moral support and you need to show your city is not the only
one suffering from this problem. This is a problem of all cities that
are centres of international trade and commerce."

Lt. Jim Speros, A Platoon Commander In Charge Of The Night Shift At The
District Station In Richmond, A Neighbourhood Near Haight-Ashbury In San
Francisco.

"The plan that Mayor Owen is proposing is exciting and deserves a
chance to work," says Speros. "After 27 years of policing, as I
prepare to retire, I seriously ask myself have we done the right thing
since the justice system certainly is not working."

Speros has one caution about what he's seen of the Vancouver plan. "I
also travelled to Amsterdam twice to review their protocol for heroin
treatment. I believe an element of control must be inserted in the
mayor's plan that the Netherlands has: Any addict seeking treatment on
demand should be a resident of Vancouver. This needs to be enforced,
as the whole program could collapse on itself if an army of addicts
from the Pacific Northwest came to Vancouver for readily available
heroin."

[Vancouver's plan proposes that the city endorse a scientific, medical
experiment currently being discussed by researchers in several North
American cities, which would see free heroin given to a select group
of long-time users.]

He also says this kind of approach takes a lot of policing. Amsterdam
has 4,400 police officers and "they maintain order." But, he says,
"the addicts are now very comfortable with the officers." And that's
what North American cities need.

Richard Lee, executive director of the Vancouver Chinatown Merchants
Association and a co-chair of Community Alliance, a coalition of
businesses and residents in communities around the Downtown Eastside.
Back to top

The Community Alliance has lobbied energetically to prevent any more
services for drug users in the area. "One theme that keeps coming back
as I talk to people is they say, 'I elect these people, but they only
put themselves in the shoes of the addict.'"

Lee said people are angry because they keep hearing people say that
addiction is a medical problem, not a criminal problem. Yet their cars
are being broken into and their grandmothers are being robbed, which
seems like a criminal problem to them.

Lee said people are also concerned because they believe the elected
officials and police have "brainwashed" everyone into believing that
possession of drugs is no longer a crime. (The city's report makes no
recommendations about decriminalizing drugs. As well, although it
talks about addiction as a medical problem, not a criminal problem, it
does so only when it's talking about people using drugs. The report
emphasizes that criminal behaviour and public-nuisance behaviour,
separate from simple drug possession, is something the city needs to
reduce.)

Lee admits that perhaps people do not know much about the actual
recommendations in the city's report, but that's because the report
hasn't been made very accessible. [The city is planning several forums
to give information and allow public discussion after Christmas.]

Lee said finally that people think that any available money should go
to treatment, not safe injection sites. One point in the plan they do
like: "They like the philosophy that it shouldn't be contained to one
neighbourhood."

John Turvey, Executive Director, Downtown Eastside Youth Activities Society.

Turvey is a former addict and one of the Downtown Eastside's
old-school voices. He began the needle exchange program in the
downtown core; his organization runs the health van that makes the
rounds in the neighbourhood and also acts as an information clearing
house for users. Turvey has always had strong opinions about what is
good for the city's drug problem, but he says he supports the
Vancouver document.

"It's good, it's a supportable document," Turvey says. "Do I agree
with all the recommendations? No I don't. But should we be discussing
them wholeheartedly? Yes we should."

Specifically, Turvey agrees with the paper's call for expanded
treatment and detox. He supports many of its harm-reduction
recommendations, though an injection site would not work without a
full spectrum of treatment options also being available, he says.
Turvey adds that he is glad for some of the more controversial items
in the report, including one that recommends an examination of options
for mandatory drug treatment for youth. He often sees young people on
the street who, because of drugs or coercion from adults such as
pimps, do not have the agency to make their own decisions. A
discussion of what can be done to help them is important, he says. And
Turvey says it is of paramount importance to get the public, "regular
Joe Schmoes," involved in the solution.

Turvey also said the report's call for additional Vancouver police,
RCMP and Organized Crime Unit investigators rings somewhat hollow.
"The city is sitting back here pointing the finger at all these other
guys," he says. If the city had provided enough policing earlier, the
drug problem would not have accelerated the way it has.

He supports the report's discussion of prevention programs: He agrees
that the usual "scared straight" approaches do not work and sometimes
heighten the allure of illegal drugs. He says that he would like to
see the development of an honest, direct program to tell kids exactly
what drugs are, how they work and what they can do to people, without
hyperbole.

Graeme Bowbrick, British Columbia Attorney-General.

British Columbia's new attorney-general says he supports many of the
individual recommendations in the report and is pleased that it will
generate public discussion. He also says that the most important part
of the report is its advocacy of a coordinated, multi-agency and
multi-level government response. But Bowbrick stops short of providing
any specific criticisms, saying he does not want to pre-empt
discussion by ruling out specific recommendations. Bowbrick pushed
last month for federal support for a drug court in British Columbia.

In the first week after he was appointed, he travelled to Toronto to
tour such a court there. So he says he was pleased to see the
recommendation in "A Framework for Action" and he hopes to have a drug
court up and running in the short term. Bowbrick also says he intends
to help review and update laws to help improve the drug situation,
including Charter-proofing existing laws where necessary. And Bowbrick
said he has shown in the past month that he is committed to solving
some of the area's drug problems.

Until last week, Bowbrick says, he had never actually gotten out of
his car and walked through the Downtown Eastside. But this week on
Welfare Wednesday, he walked through the neighbourhood with Donald
MacPherson, the author of Vancouver's report, as well as with police
who work in the area.

"I think it's very easy for us to look at this problem in an anonymous
way," he said of his experience. "These are not faces we recognize,
these are not people we talk to on a day-to-day basis." But he had a
chance to speak with users in alleys, he says. One man in particular
told him about how he had tried to clean up, and more immediately
about how he had spent his cheque that day. "You get a sense of the
human impact of this problem. That made a great impression on me."
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake