Pubdate: Mon, 05 Feb 2001
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Copyright: 2001, The Globe and Mail Company
Contact:  http://www.globeandmail.ca/
Forum: http://forums.theglobeandmail.com/
Author: Paul Sullivan

A PROBLEM TOO BIG TO IGNORE

You can ignore the drug problem in downtown Vancouver, but you have to stay 
away from downtown.

As the streets bustle with lunch-time traffic, just about every corner 
features a heroin addict looking for a little spare change. And just a few 
blocks east of the tourist epicentre -- the Pan Pacific, the cruise-ship 
and sea-bus terminals -- is a no-man's land called the Downtown Eastside, 
where even the most determined effort to avoid unpleasantness is bound to fail.

As you hurry to your car, you'll see a young man and woman huddled in the 
doorway of a grey building with grimy windows. The woman watches the man 
drive a hypodermic needle into his eye.

Or as you wait at the curb to pick up someone, you see a woman lying 
against the building, her head back, her mouth open, a needle dangling out 
of her arm. She looks dead but, somehow, you know not to get alarmed and 
rush to help her. Somehow, you know to leave her alone.

It seems as if every dark corner features its own grisly tableau, and you 
learn not to see, even if there's nowhere else to look.

But the drug crisis in Canada's tourist capital is so bad that the 
cruise-ship operators can't ignore it. They supply their customers with 
notices warning them not to stray from Gastown, its steam clock, funky 
cafes and shops.

According to a Framework for Action, a 76-page manifesto more commonly 
known as the Mayor's Plan, there are 12,000 injection drug users living in 
Vancouver. The Needle Exchange, where addicts come to get clean needles 
free, handed out nearly 3.3 million needles last year. That's right, 3.3 
million!

It's almost as if we've come to accept human degradation as part of the 
landscape, as immutable as the mountains.

Finally, however, we're trying to do something about it. There's the 
Vancouver Agreement, a three-government effort to fight the problem and, 
now, there's the Mayor's Plan, a multimillion-dollar vision that proposes a 
radical departure from the traditional approach.

The plan advocates "harm reduction," and recommends that addicts be treated 
with heroin, that safe injection sites be set up where addicts can go, out 
of harm's way, to shoot up in peace.

Such proposals are, of course, wildly controversial. A group of Downtown 
Eastside business owners and residents have come together in the Community 
Alliance to specifically fight harm reduction, which, they argue, will 
transfer the harm to the hard-working, tax-paying citizens of the Downtown 
Eastside, ruin their businesses and jeopardize their safety.

It's hard not to have sympathy for these people, whose daily lives are like 
a tour of Dante's Inferno, but something has to be done. The litany of woe 
is intolerable: Hundreds die of overdoses; young girls are trapped into 
prostitution; at least a quarter of the addicts are HIV positive. The 
Downtown Eastside is a breeding ground for disease and crime.

Donald MacPherson, who wrote the Mayor's Plan, says there is plenty of 
evidence for the success of harm-reduction programs in Germany and 
Switzerland. A recent poll in Vancouver indicates that the public attitude 
toward harm reduction is changing. Of the 300 people surveyed, 61 per cent 
said they support the medical use of heroin and safe injection sites.

The Mayor's Plan is going through public hearings right now. There is a 
sense of urgency in the air, a notion that this time we're really on the 
verge of a solution, even if it means swallowing our compunctions about 
giving addicts a free fix and a safe place to shoot up.

Yet people who work with the addicts are worried. They see harm reduction 
as a showy distraction from the real need: more detox beds, long-term 
treatment and counselling. They argue that addicts want to get clean, and 
there is a very delicate window of opportunity once they gather up the 
will. They need access to detox right at the crucial moment, not just on 
Welfare Wednesday, the one day a month when everyone has enough money to 
buy drugs, the one day you can count on a bed in detox.

They point out that Frankfurt has five times as many police on the streets 
as Vancouver, that police force addicts to use safe injection sites and, 
even then, more than one in three don't go to them. The very term "safe 
injection site" is misleading, they say. No one is safe from bad drugs or 
unusually potent drugs.

Still, the people on the front line think Mayor Philip Owen is a man of 
good intentions, even if his plan is flawed and incomplete. It's just that 
when you live with this misery every day, the truth is obvious: There is no 
quick fix.
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