Pubdate: Wed, 24 Oct 2007
Source: North Shore News (CN BC)
Copyright: 2007 North Shore News
Contact:  http://www.nsnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/311
Author: Jerry Paradis
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/hr.htm (Harm Reduction)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?199 (Mandatory Minimum Sentencing)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Tony+Clement
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Stephen+Harper

THE 'PARTY' THAT NEVER WAS

THE other day an interested observer found himself walking in 
Vancouver from Main and Powell to Hastings and Carral, a stroll 
through what we -- and the rest of the country -- consider an open 
sore on our body politic.

It was a bright and warm fall day. The rains of the days before had 
been hard and the many in the area who call no place home had had 
several rough and wet nights. It was mid-morning, and those on the 
street were getting their day organized: check around to see what's 
available, maybe do a little dumpster diving to scrape together 
enough to pay for it, line up for some food, score and let the night 
come. This is the good time of day, when the throngs are up and out, 
most of them greeting and reminding each other that this is a 
community, close in its shared needs and fears, in its desperation. 
Friendships and enmities are strong.

For some, the day is not getting off to a particularly good start.

A small native woman pounds on a door and mutters something into its 
opaque glass. She wears a long grey shredded sweater over an 
impossibly short denim skirt, her thick feet in unlaced runners that 
once were white but now seem to be an extension of her skin colour. 
Several people, moving with that jerky urgency typical of the crack 
addict, wander in front of and through traffic on Main, Cordova and 
Hastings, indifferent to the danger -- or maybe welcoming it.

On Hastings, just past the Carnegie Centre, two men looking like 
twins dressed by their mother, in their matching stained green 
jackets and black jeans, are alternately arguing and laughing over 
something they are intently looking at on a window ledge. One 
suddenly grabs it and starts to hurry away. The other shouts, swears 
and turns to follow. He trips and falls hard, scrambles to his feet 
and runs unsteadily after his friend.

A small woman, with legs so thin they would fit comfortably into 
shirtsleeves, walks quickly along, doing a sort of goose-step, then 
suddenly stops, swears at the sky, spins and walks in the other 
direction. Twenty paces on she stops, stamps her foot hard, raises 
her arm as in a Hitler salute, yells "f*!" again, turns and struts 
back. She repeats the performance over and over again, like a wind-up 
doll. She looks so frail the strength of her voice is a shock. Her 
face is pale and lined like crumpled parchment. Her eyes glare out 
from under her hoodie, over a long, thin nose and a mouth that is 
hardly more than another crease.

The morning crowd gathers in the sun at Pigeon Park. A big man with a 
radiant smile, his eyes closed, sits on a bench softly singing an 
unintelligible song. Near him, two men and a woman share a pipe, 
while on the ground against the wall lies a well-blanketed body, a 
late riser. The garbage strewn everywhere complements the weary, 
disheveled clot of people intent on only one thing: survival of another day.

That's the "party" federal Health Minister Tony Clement announced a 
week earlier is over. Some party.

And on offer from our ideologically blinkered leaders -- if they 
really mean what they say -- is $63.8 million over two years to deal 
with the ever present "drug problem": $32 million for treatment, $10 
million for prevention and $22 million for enforcement. Not one cent 
allocated to efforts to alleviate the dislocation, disease and death 
that can accompany addiction. The prime minister keeps a straight 
face as he insists that his new "strategy" (which is anything but 
new) is both "tough" and "compassionate."

The tough part consists of "cracking down" on dealers and smugglers 
and, when they're caught and convicted, hitting them with mandatory 
minimum sentences. Presumably, this crackdown will work where the 
hundreds before it have failed because $11 million per year will be 
added to the almost $500 million already spent annually on enforcing 
our drug laws.

The most that can be expected is a miniscule acceleration of what has 
been happening for a century: only street-level dealers and, very 
occasionally, middlemen will end up in court. Those who maintain 
control of the prohibition-created multi-billion dollar market, those 
who decide on the sources, availability, price and quality of the 
drugs, those who benefit from addicts continuing their addiction, 
will look down from above and smile.

I'll devote more space next time to mandatory minimum sentences. It's 
enough to note that Mr. Harper's own Department of Justice has two 
reports, one from 2002 and another from 2005, which both make clear 
that mandatory minimums are a futile and costly tool for fighting 
crime, especially drug crime. He doesn't have far to look to get the facts.

The lack of serious thought behind what the P.M. laughingly calls the 
"compassionate" part of the strategy is equally reprehensible. His 
paltry $16 million per year for treatment will provide an additional 
ten detox beds for all of B.C., per year -- and that's before 
treatment can even begin.That pittance in the face of an $18 billion 
surplus? That's the best they can do when they say that, this time, 
they're really serious?

The fact that not a nickel is allocated to harm reduction cements the 
notion that all of this is pure political posturing in anticipation 
of an election. The only sensible assessment is that they can't mean 
it. If they did, it would signify that both Harper and Clement are 
ignoramuses, which they demonstrably are not. But they do expect that 
talking tough about drugs, while toeing the ideological line that 
harm reduction is equivalent to enabling, might garner a few votes. 
Sadly, they are probably right.

Which only makes their cynicism as appalling as the wastefulness of 
the strategy itself. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake