May 24 and 31, 2007: E-mail conversation with Barry Joneson on addiction and recovery.

Hello Craig,

I read all you columns via e mail and I get a lot of stuff from Al Arsenault. Your piece on crime and sentencing etc was very good. 

I work with offenders who are getting out of jail and are trying to turn their lives around. I also work with addicts and homeless populations that are trying to do the same. 

Every year I go to different States to see what is and what isn't working down there in regards to helping these groups overcome their barriers. Last year I was at Homeboy-Industries in LA, it is arguably the most gang infested part of LA, they just had a one hour documentary on the area called Homicide in Hollenbeck, and Homeboy is right in the middle of the Hollenbeck Police District. 

Anyway I spent some time with a lot of very hard core gang members and I asked them why they are getting out of the life. The answer was most often because the jail sentences are too long. Some of the older guys have families and they have two strikes against them and a third could put them in jail for a long time. Some of the younger kids have one strike and are afraid of getting another and then always worrying about taking a third which could possibly be for something quite minor or even a wrongful conviction.

These gang members sign up; they go through a year of learning employment skills while at the same time getting weekly tattoo removal treatments to get all the tattoos off their faces so they will be more presentable for a job. We need that here, longer sentences and also to try and get the criminals out of the lifestyle.

Here, unfortunately with all the harm reduction stuff going on, not much will change. Hopefully it will change if folks like you keep bringing up the issue and folks like me provide businesses that hire only addicts, criminals and homeless people who want to turn their lives around. I've been doing it for fourteen years with a social enterprise/ for profit business much like they are doing in the States at Homeboy and other places I have visited. 

The government doesn't have to put out the money we just need to get these guys off drugs or get them to realize crime doesn't pay and an honest living will get them farther ahead and increase their self esteem. Anyways, there I go and a rant but the solution is so simple but the government folks want to continue with a complex knee-jerk reaction to the drug problem when the answer is really quite simple. 

I've been homeless and addicted, I spent time in jail for stealing to support my habit and I don't have to do it anymore and most of those on the skids don't have to either. I thank God every day that harm reduction wasn't around when I quit drugs because it would have made my life as an addict too easy and I would have never had to hit a bottom that is a pre-requisite to making the decision to quit using drugs.                       

Barry Joneson.

Barry

Would you permit me to use your email, or an abridgement of it, in an upcoming column I’m going to do about the ongoing drug problem in Vancouver? I will be making a specific objection to the supervised injection site and I would like your opinion on my premise.

I am deeply troubled by the silence of practising doctors who seem to allow the bureaucratic medicine men (BMM) to make claims about the Supervised Injection Site (SIS) that are false.

The BMM always refer to groups of addicts, or cohorts of addicts, and how they are benefiting from the SIS; never in terms of individuals and their health and welfare.

I want to state what to me is all too obvious: What would occur at the SIS if every so-called client was greeted by a practising doctor as is the case in emergency wards? To me it would be the height of professional negligence for a doctor to permit a patient (and that is the relationship that would occur at the entry to the SIS) to inject an undetermined substance.

I liken it to what would happen in any practitioner’s office. The patient is ushered in to the doctor’s private office and asked what medical need he has.

“Well doc I’ve just got my hands on some heroin (or …) and I need help injecting it.”

The doctor’s answer must be: “No, you must not inject it, even if it is pharmaceutically prepared heroin. And you’ve got to stop using because it is a poison that will ruin your health. If I’m going to do anything for you I must first do a thorough examination to find out if you have already damaged yourself. If I give in to you and assist you in any way to inject heroin I would lose my right to practice.”

The wannabe patient: “Don’t get so uppity doc cause I’m just going walk right out of here and take the Sky Train to Vancouver and they’ll do it for me at the SIS.”

We have an increasing number of pseudo BMMs, medical practitioners who are licensed by the Health Authority to put narcotic users on the treadmill of methadone, yet I doubt if any of them would take a shift as an intake doctor at our SIS.

I look forward to your comments.

Craig

Yes you may use the e mail I sent you in your upcoming article if you think it could be of use to you. 

The whole Supervised Injection Site thing is plain wrong and was a knee jerk reaction to a spike in overdose deaths from heroin in the early nineties when there was a glut of pure heroin on the market. Overdose deaths peaked in the early nineties and were going down on their own long before the SIS was up and running. In fact, by the time the SIS came into operation heroin wasn't even the drug of choice for addicts in the DTES. That is very typical of how the government responds to problems. 

I think the SIS and harm reduction in general is losing its traction and the Conservatives will put it to rest once and for all. There will still be Methadone for those who want it but that will probably be the extent of harm reduction. 

Methadone is worse than heroin but the good old Methadone docs got a good thing going, many are making big bucks from it. They are quick to put addicts on and so many are so young now when they go on the program and it should be used as a last resort when all else has failed, like they do in Sweden with a very limited Methadone program. 

I like your analogy of the guy with the heroin going into the doctors office to talk to the doc, thats really how crazy the whole idea is.

Barry Joneson