Pubdate: Tue, 24 Sep 2002 Source: Business In Vancouver (CN BC) Copyright: 2002 BIV Publications Ltd. Contact: http://www.biv.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2458 Author: Peter Ladner STATUS QUO WILL NOT SOLVE VANCOUVER'S DRUG PROBLEM With drug-driven property crime at or near the top of every list of business concerns in the Lower Mainland, it was amazing to hear the experts at a recent drug policy seminar all pointing to the same solutions. Equally amazing is the fierce resistance in some quarters to adopting those solutions, because they require us to change our thinking about controlling drug abuse. The only thing worse than some of these solutions is the status quo. Based on what I heard at the Saving Money, Saving Lives conference last week at Simon Fraser University, here are some things the business community can do. First, trust the Vancouver Agreement, which lays down a multi-government plan of action built around the so-called four pillars of prevention, harm reduction, treatment and enforcement. The answers and action plans have all been ratified by virtually every major social and educational institution in town, along with many business organizations. Understand the business case for spending on prevention, treatment and harm reduction as well as enforcement. Respect the experience of Inspector Kash Heed from the vice and drugs division of the Vancouver Police Department, who said, "We cannot arrest our way out of the drug problem." Look at the estimated $18 billion direct and indirect cost of illegal drug use in Canada and ask yourself if that's the result of a successful anti-drug strategy. Hear Patrick Basham's observation that most drug-related crime is actually prohibition-related crime. Basham is with the Cato Institute, having moved there from the Fraser Institute, where he led its discussions on legalizing drugs (oldfraser.lexi.net/publications/books/drug_papers). "Ninety per cent of drug-related crime results, not from drug use, but from the illegality of drugs," he pointed out. "Prohibition has created a business environment in which there's nothing as profitable as smuggling and selling drugs." Prohibition also causes addicts to take a gamble on dosage, quality and safety when they ingest. Every time they lose that gamble, society picks up the health costs. One out of three new HIV cases is drug-related. Every new HIV/AIDS patient drains an average of $150,000 in public spending. Look at the criminal explosion that arose out of the failed North American experiment with alcohol prohibition and ask yourself what's different about the current crime wave driven by drug prohibition. Recognize the difference between our instinctive reaction to this drug chaos and the practical realities. The instinctive reaction - on seeing the open drug market at Hastings and Main, the damage it's doing to businesses in the area, the threat it offers to our Olympic bid - is to say, as one developer did: "Just add 60 police officers to the neighbourhood and clean it up." But do the math. At $100,000 total cost for every police officer, that's $6 million a year to displace the problem and relocate it to other areas of the Lower Mainland. In those areas, other police resources will be added to displace it - back to the downtown area? Then there's the immense cost of prosecution and ongoing incarceration. Even if we could lock up all the addicts, drug use is rampant in jails, from where the addicts will eventually emerge to resume breaking into cars and homes. One place where business can contribute is in generating employment in the Downtown Eastside. Experienced business people are desperately needed to get employment going, but someone has to convince people hardened by years of dealing with unscrupulous slum landlords that just because business investors get something in their pockets, the community doesn't lose. Someone has to do the missionary work with elements in that community who seem to have a perverse pride in having the poorest postal code in Canada, perhaps because they benefit from keeping it that way. The gospel has to be diversity. New residents who aren't desperate and strung out are good. Mixed neighbourhoods are healthy neighbourhoods. Homeowners mixed with renters are good. People with jobs, living in non-subsidized housing, add a mix that's essential for local shops and services to survive. That means looking at ways to upgrade the area without up-ending the community: somewhere between another SRO hotel and a high-end tower. But of all the things business could do, the most powerful would be for Downtown Eastside property owners and merchants to lay down conditions under which they would accept a safe injection site. In one European city, they allowed one in on the condition that the neighbours could determine its future by a referendum after a year. (They voted overwhelmingly to keep it.) These sites have been proven to cut crime by 50 per cent. They extricate users from the grip of their pushers, and they do it without the "honey-pot" effect of attracting new users. This is the most effective step that can be taken. It has the best chance of providing immediate, measurable desirable results, however much they're mixed with undesirable elements we wish we could eliminate but that we never will.