'THE CALL OF CRACK IS SO STRONG': PANELLIST

Drugs do not discriminate. They destroy lives of the wealthy and
socially elite as readily as the poor and marginalized. They take men
or women and people of any race or sexual orientation.

Friends, family members and co-workers are often taken down too, as
collateral damage.

And the drug problem in Guelph is now large enough to gobble a large
portion of the city's annual budget.

Twenty-four million dollars was recently allocated to the Guelph
Police Service, in large part to combat the petty crime, assaults and
vagrancy associated with drugs and drug trafficking, said Ward 4
Councillor Mike Salisbury.

"That puts this issue high up on my plate," Salisbury said after
attending a panel discussion on Saturday that was organized by the
Guelph Union of Tenants and Supporters, a radical, grassroots social
justice group in the city.

"This affects everyone. If we didn't have a drug problem in Guelph,
we wouldn't spend a fifth of the city's budget on policing. There are
24 million reasons to do something about it."

The Guelph Union of Tenants and Supporters (GUTS) invited four
speakers for a panel discussion of strategies in the war on drugs,
including harm reduction -- a philosophy that's embraced by the AIDS
Committee of Guelph and Wellington County and the local public health
agency as well as agencies in other communities.

Salisbury was the only councillor to attend.

Panellist Wayne Copeland's personal story debunked the myth that
drugs are a problem only for the poor and socially marginalized.

The Guelph man said he had a good life working in the aerospace
industry "and had a solid, six-figure income."

Living the fast life, he began to take drugs for recreation "and
eventually found my way to harder drugs," he said. "I reached a point
where I was spending $1,000 a day."

Copeland recently completed the program at Stonehenge Therapeutic
Community, a long-term treatment facility, and he hopes the lessons
he's learned in treatment will help him as he returns to his regular life.

"But the call of crack is so strong," he said. "It's insidious."

Josephine Grey, who spoke on behalf of the group Low Income Families
Together, also had a gripping personal story to share with the
roughly 30 people who attended the discussion.

Grey said she's lived in a diverse community in downtown Toronto for
20 years, a neighbourhood that provided social supports to new
Canadians who settled there.

But when the Mike Harris Conservatives cut social spending by 21 per
cent in 1995, her community "went from being a model to a disaster," Grey said.

"Fear and frustration have led to suicides and shootings. Young
people turned to the drug trade to supplement their incomes. And I am
a widow because of crack. I have a huge amount of anger about this issue."

B. J. Caldwell, prevention and outreach co-ordinator with the local
AIDS committee, and Kim Toombs, a harm-reduction worker with the
Agincourt Community Services Association in Scarborough, were on the
same page when speaking about harm reduction.

Harm reduction is a strategy including providing needle-exchange
sites and safer crack-use kits for drug users, thereby reducing the
risk of spreading diseases such as HIV and hepatitis C.

"People think we are condoning drug use but that is not the case,"
Caldwell said. "Studies show harm reduction works."

That said, the panel agreed harm reduction isn't enough on its own to
fight drugs. But that's the only solution Guelph has mustered so far,
they said.

"The four pillars are law enforcement, harm reduction, education and
treatment," he said. "In Guelph there's a decided lack of treatment options."

"We are definitely lacking services in the area," agreed Salisbury
after the meeting. "We have no detox centres here. And Stonehenge and
the Homewood measure their waits in months, not days or weeks. It's a
fact that when someone is ready for help they can't find it."

Ed Pickersgill, co-ordinator of Fresh Start Housing, a non-profit
agency advocating for the homeless and marginalized, stole the floor
during the question-and-answer session.

He stressed we should never forget that "crackheads" and other drug
users are human beings and should not be pushed to the side.

"If we don't accept these unfortunates, there will be no solution for
them and they will die," Pickersgill said bluntly.

"The government funds separate aspects of people. They have to
separate themselves to get help," meaning you go one place for
medical help, another for emotional help, another for psychiatric
help and other places for funding assistance. These hurdles keep an
addict from seeking help, Pickersgill said.

"I wish it could be as simple as (the) Kyoto (accord)," he said.