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Vancouver’s
“Four Pillars Program
is a One Legged Horse HOW far can you travel on a one legged horse? Right to where the money stops, if the animal is harm reduction philosophy and you’re good with a whip. The money won’t be stopping any time soon, and addicts in Vancouver will continue riding a ‘Four Pillar’ drug program missing most of its legs. Consider the four on their sides: Prevention, Treatment, Enforcement and Harm Reduction. They make instinctive sense, as a support structure for a rehabilitation plateau. Work to prevent people from turning to dope, get those who take the fall into treatment; apply law enforcement to control and minimize, use harm reduction to reduce suffering. It’s not a failed concept. Conservative and liberal players can be seen lining up, for and against, but the Four Pillars plan has never really been tried. Prevention, which should be both starting point and goal, is conspicuously absent. We see no anti drug advertising as a result of pillars funding. Anti-tobacco and drunk-driving ads are everywhere, and they seem to work. Numbers show they’re worth the money, as societal costs of tobacco and alcohol outstrip the income they bring to governments. The same principle would have to apply to drug use. Treatment, which should be an instinctive icon, is effectively non-existent. There are facilities, and they do help drug addicts, but they’re so badly overwhelmed it takes six weeks and more to get in. For people on the street, a bed six weeks distant might as well be on Mars. Cocaine and heroin types have moments of sufficient pain and lucidity to try getting clean, but windows of sanity open for fifteen or twenty minutes at best. If there were a place they could step into for help, they’d take it. Enforcement is a given. Police carry on, arrests are made, and some sense of order is maintained. We’re more or less resigned to the role of referee, with courts reluctant to jail addicts and streets resembling scenes from Dawn of the Dead. Then there’s harm reduction. What should have been a thoughtful application of measures to reduce suffering became a political avalanche. Needle exchange and safe injection sites failed to produce as promised. Aids/HIV and Hepatitis are now prevalent enough to render ‘out-of-control’ a quaint aphorism. Our streets are prickly with discarded syringes; sharing of needles continues unabated. Overdoses are up, despite the opportunity to inject with someone watching. Enough money is being thrown at harm reduction to render the pillars plan a gold plated pogo stick, hopping on the spot and unwilling to move. Anyone who is critical og harm reduction is labeled as hateful, inhuman. I began typing "yet we all have the same goal- getting people clean" and stopped. We don’t. Harm reduction devotees seem more interested in keeping their client base on the dope than in giving them their lives back. Dare I name Anne Livingstone, who works for VANDU- the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, funded by our own Coastal Health Authority? Her latest statement of interest was that harm reduction advocates should be visiting elementary schools, to teach little kids how to inject drugs safely. This was heard first-hand by several police officers at a recent Carnegie centre strategy meeting. I’m trying to think of ways for that not to be insane. Maybe the odd kid will end up on the street, fall into drug addiction. If they end up shooting their dope, they should know how to so safely? Clean up afterwards? Nope, it’s just nuts. Presenting the horrors of addiction and intravenous narcotic use as lifestyle choices is the last thing we need to do to our children. Harm reducers seem to have stumbled en masse into the Stockholm Syndrome- where the tormented grow fond of their tormentors. They ignore or attack research showing harm reduction to be other than mystically right. It’s as though harm-reduction believers wouldn’t be happy until we had laws forcing people to take drugs. The rest of society has not grown fond of the addicted crime wave. We’re being ripped off in unprecedented numbers. Most of us know better than to think that needles and free dope are an answer to life-negating tragedy. I don't mind predicting: we’ll be handing out free dope soon, if we’re not already. The home-reduction crowd has taken over the political scene, such that funding is unlikely to go anywhere but their way in the near future. Yet even knowing that, I don't think we should abandon harm reduction. We’re compassionate people after all, and those who can’t get off the dope shouldn’t do without help. All the same, it would be nice if someone who did want to get clean could have a shot at it; and it would be ever better if young ones considering a drug adventure could be surrounded by accurate and enlightening messages. Law-enforcement budgeting and judicial reform are topics for another time. Here and now, I’d encourage anyone listening to drug rhetoric to think very carefully about who wants what for our addicted population. There is no need to turn against the Four Pillars plan. Not even against harm reduction. Instead, we should insist that the plan be implemented, made to walk on all its legs. I challenge anyone with a voice or an ear- make it happen and see what comes. * * * * Sgt. Mark Tonner is a Vancouver police officer, whose column appears bi-weekly on Sundays in the Unwind section of the Province. His opinions aren’t necessarily those of the Vancouver Police Department or the Vancouver Police Board. Mark may be contacted at: <mailto:marcuspt@shaw.ca> marcuspt@shaw.ca> |
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