Pubdate: Wed, 08 Mar 2006
Source: Vancouver Courier (CN BC)
Copyright: 2006 Vancouver Courier
Contact:  http://www.vancourier.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/474
Author: Mike Howell, Staff writer

WAR AGAINST OPEN DRUG USE CAPTURES 25

Twenty-five people have been charged with using drugs in the city 
since police began its crackdown last month to curb the illegal open 
air drug market, says a Vancouver police sergeant.

Sgt. Joanne Boyle of the City Wide Enforcement Team said the majority 
of arrests since Feb.17 occurred in the Downtown Eastside. Fifteen of 
those were made in Parks, including Andy Livingstone park near GM 
Place and Victoria Park off Commercial Drive.

All but two of the 25 people were allegedly using crack cocaine. The 
other two were allegedly injecting heroin, said Boyle, noting "there 
are more people in the Downtown Eastside smoking crack than using 
heroin, for sure."

None has gone to trial or been sentenced.

All 25, however, will have a chance to attend the city's drug court, 
which includes treatment. The federal Crown prosecutor will review 
each case before a decision is made, Boyle said.

"Unless there's something extenuating with each of these, that will 
be their first option," she added. "Then it's up to them whether they 
want to take that route or not."

The program, which is run out of an undisclosed downtown building, 
includes counselling, random urine tests, methadone therapy, curfews, 
and weekly reports to the court.

As the Courier learned in researching a story on the drug court, all 
participants in the program are longtime addicts, most of whom 
started using in their teens.

Many were infected with Hepatitis C and HIV and have criminal 
histories tied to small-time drug dealing and petty theft. Some had 
up to 80 criminal convictions and others worked in the sex trade.

A person graduates when they are clean of cocaine, heroin or crystal 
methamphetamine for the last three months of what is usually a year 
to an 18-month treatment program.

The person must also have stable housing and either be working or 
attending a job training program to graduate. When the Courier last 
published a story in December 2004 about drug court, 36 people had 
graduated from the program.

"In a way, it's an added benefit to us that we know these people are 
being offered treatment after being arrested," Boyle said of the 
four-year-old drug court. "Before the drug treatment court existed, 
it wasn't necessarily an option unless it was judge-imposed."

The crackdown follows a similar initiative the VPD launched in 
November, in which police targeted people injecting drugs within a 
four-block radius of the city's supervised injection site on East 
Hastings. Police arrested 13 people in that project.

Boyle said that for several years arresting people for open use drugs 
in the city wasn't in the public interest. That policy has led to a 
dramatic increase in the illegal open air drug market.

"By not enforcing it previously over the last few years, the message 
we were sending to users probably was that it was OK," Boyle said.

Police now have the full support of the federal Crown office, which 
approves drug charges. Boyle believes the enforcement is working.

"There has been a behavioural change."

Dianne Tobin, president of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, 
told the Courier last month the police action is a waste of money and 
pushes drug users into other neighbourhoods.

Tobin said the city needs more injection sites and a legal site for 
crack users to smoke their cocaine.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman