ADDICTION TREATMENT CENTRE TORMENTS CORKTOWNERS

Don't get them wrong. They're not NIMBYs. Corktown residents gathered
last month in antique Enoch Turner Schoolhouse in a promise kept by
their MPP, Health Minister George Smitherman to add a third Methadone
Task Force hearing specifically for them. He spoke briefly, pledging
to make the task force report public and promising not to create a
needle exchange there, as so many were fearing.

The people of historic Corktown have long held high hopes for their
picturesque slice of Old Town Toronto, near where Canada's First
Parliament building stood at the southwest corner of Parliament and
Front St. E. until the Yankees burnt it down in the War of 1812. (In
later retaliation "our" soldiers set fire to the home of the U.S.
government. They failed to burn down that structure, but they charred
it so badly it took coats of whitewash to make it presentable. Thus it
came to be known as The White House.) Corktown is thought by some to
have been named for its early inhabitants, many of whom came from
County Cork in Ireland during the Great Potato Famine and later.

In the 1990s Corktown businesses polished up their storefronts in
anticipation of a cleaner, brighter neighbourhood future. Sitting in
the divided Toronto-Centre Rosedale ward, home to the city's massive
concentration of social service facilities, Corktown had endured the
onslaught of crackheads who invaded and brought with them the outward
signs of their inner miseries.

In 2004 the notorious and troublesome Tent City to the south, a
frequent source of undesired visitors, was closed and most of its 140
destitute inhabitants were housed around Toronto thanks to city
efforts and those of various anti-poverty groups, especially the
locally based Toronto Disaster Relief Committee. A period of relative
calm settled on Corktown and business owners and residents began to
dream in Technicolor of a high-end retail destination and comfy
dwellings in a lovely, tidy setting.

They prettied up their Sackville Park with lots of neighbourhood
volunteer labour and lobbied city hall for historic decorative
lampposts that hearken back to Victorian-era gaslights.

Then, in their view, just before Christmas 2005, bureaucrats dropped a
turd in the punchbowl. They announced that a methadone store
specializing in dishing out pharmacist-supervised doses to addicts was
moving from St. Lawrence Neighbourhood, where some of its more
troublesome clientele had for years outraged nearby condo dwellers, to
a larger King St. location in a historic Corktown building adjacent to
the park, a school, a church.

No community consultation. Just a fact of life that was to become
sadder as time wore on and the daily 350 addicts accumulated around
the property that had only a few inside seats, meaning many must hang
around outside.

A few of them (5% were some estimates) caused problems for the
Corktown residents and businesses. But those 5-percenters were there
every day because methadone is not something that can be handed out in
advance; it has a value on the illegal drug market, so dispensers want
to see it consumed on the site.

The specialized dispensing operation is entirely lawful, has been
promoted by federal and provincial governments, is not restricted by
the city as to where it can locate, and the owners have a right to
practise as they do, where they do.

Corktowners testifying before the task force expressed great sympathy
for the people who must go there to get what one addict is quoted as
calling "a liquid noose" around the neck. Methadone is as addictive as
the heroin and debilitating pharmaceutical pain killers it replaces,
but it permits those hooked on it to lead more normal lives--except
for the gnawing need to report to a methadone store to get their
fixes. Some drift in and out of using illegal drugs, which accounts
for the dealing that often occurs nearby. Temptation is always close.

They are also checked to see if they have used other drugs and their
conditions are monitored by on-site professionals according to
government-mandated protocols.

A brief from the Corktown Residents and Business Association read by
Suzanne Edmonds to the task force said the current structure of
requiring recovering drug addicts using methadone replacement to
report daily to methadone distribution centres discriminates against
them and invades their privacy. Many innocently became addicted after
their physicians legitimately prescribed potent pain killers to treat
severe temporary conditions.

They are lumped together with hard-core street junkies who come to the
neighbourhood and do what street junkies do, says the CRBA submission.
They deal drugs, they urinate and defecate in the park and in
alleyways, they vomit on the sidewalks and walls of buildings, they
force their ways into restaurant and business washrooms to shoot up or
smoke crack, they leave their needles and paraphernalia in the park
and in alleyways, they cause concern by putting themselves in danger
in traffic, or passing out on the street.

Some of the entrepreneurial among them who have stayed clean (or claim
to have stayed clean) fill bottles with their urine and sell them in
the park to those who have to take drug tests. (The full presentation
is online at www.thebulletin.ca)

The brief says: "Our residents no longer feel safe. Our commercial
sites have suffered a loss of business and in some cases, have chosen
to leave our community. Some incidents have been reported to the
police but in most cases, the perpetrator is long gone by the time the
police answer the call, so many residents no longer make a police report.

"Very few families now visit Sackville Park as many of the incidents
described above have occurred in front of children. One resident asks
how he can continue to teach social values to his 17-year-old son when
every day this teenager witnesses drug deals being openly conducted
across from his home."

Three officers from 51 Division, including community affairs Staff
Sgt. Frank Bergen, were in attendance at the hearing, which was for
Corktown residents. About 40 Corktowners were there and a dozen spoke
their concerns.

They were critical of the structure of the methadone program, with
some suggesting to the task force that any pharmacist be able to
dispense the substance and thus spreading out the distribution of
methadone and avoiding such high-intensity pockets as Corktown has
become. Others suggested that hospitals are the best place to provide
the palliative.

Operating a methadone clinic can be a goldmine for pharmacists with
some investment backing and the right training, as one Corktowner
pointed out. Without the government approval, such single-purpose
business plans would make no sense.

In essence, government has taken a Tory-style position in privatizing
distribution of a public health service that many think should take
place in the anonymity of a hospital setting, not with clients of
for-profit businesses hanging around outside in residential
neighbourhoods.