Pubdate: Thu, 12 Dec 2002
Source: The Outlook (CN BC)
Copyright: 2002 The Outlook
Contact:  http://www.northshoreoutlook.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1433
Author: Denny Boyd

BOYD'S TOWN

LANDSLIDE LARRY IS A NICE GUY, BUT HIS DRUG POLICY IS WRONGHEADED.

I met Landslide Larry Campbell at a party Saturday night and liked him 
immediately.

Liked him, but join his holy crusade? I don't think so.

I was introduced to the new Vancouver mayor by his immediate predecessor, 
Philip Owen, and the differences between the two throne-holders was 
immediate and striking.

Despite his last-minute proletarian acclamation for getting out on downtown 
Vancouver's shabbiest streets, Owen is still essentially the same patrician 
he was when he first came under the political spotlight. He is a nervous 
speaker and tries too hard to fit into a crowd. He, Campbell, West 
Vancouver MLA Ralph Sultan and I spent 30 minutes squashed into a corner, 
trading political barbs.

Campbell is a man's man, a bit boisterous, clearly self-confident, easy to 
speak to, what you'd expect an old cop to be. It is rather remarkable that 
Owen and Campbell should wind up sharing the same ideological tent, 
conservative businessman, left-wing ex-cop. But they were able to get face 
to face and agree on a proposed solution to the east-side's horrendous drug 
problem.

Ultimately, and to the thorough surprise of most political theorists, it 
was drugs, not jobs, not taxes, not economic reform, that pushed Campbell 
and the dormant Committee of Progressive Electors to near total domination 
of Vancouver council, school and park boards and the over-confident 
incumbents out on their ears.

Specifically, it was the grandiose 'harm reduction theory' of drug reform 
that worked for COPE, the notion that since you can't stop drug use, 
minimize the havoc it causes by making the users as comfortable as 
possible, with an easy supply of drugs, and an antiseptic place to use 
them, and crime and drug-related death and disease will diminish.

I don't buy it. Never have. That method doesn't control drug use, it 
facilitates it.

Alcoholics Anonymous has a handy word for that approach; they call it 
"enabling," the creation of an environment that encourages continued drug 
use by removing any call for self-control.

You may have noticed a progressively tolerant vocabulary for harm reduction 
facilities. At first they were called shooting galleries. Then safe 
injection sites. Now, tra-la, they are safe consumption facilities.

These will be the prominent places where, in theory, addicts can shoot 
drugs with clean needles, watched over by nurses, doctors and counsellors. 
Questions:

Will these places welcome equally heroin shooters, marijuana smokers, meth 
heads, crack addicts and winos? They're all drug users.

How many nurses and doctors, will want to make a career of tending diseased 
crack addicts, who have to shoot up 15, 20 times a day, just to stay sane?

How determinedly will the criminal element seek to control these sites, for 
power and profit?

How long will it take for word to filter out to free-loading druggies all 
across Canada that Vancouver is a vacation paradise?
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