DRUG CONFERENCE HIGH ON HARM REDUCTION

Pastor Wonders Why She Was Excluded From UN Forum

For a region thick with addicts and thin on rehab beds, it's logical
to assume a global forum on solving the world's drug woes would want
to encourage talks on various recovery initiatives.

At least Gloria Kieler, a faith-based, go-clean worker in Vancouver's
Downtown Eastside for the past 16 years, thought so.

The East Hastings storefront pastor expected treatment and
rehabilitation to be the operative buzz-words when delegates from 70
non-governmental groups (NGOs) gathered this week for the UN-stamped
forum in Vancouver that's supposedly rooting for a drug-free world.

Not only were rehab and recovery missing from the agenda, she was
too, as was Urban Core, a committee of 40 DTES groups who work in the
trenches daily to help drug addicts and needles users get clean.

In fact, few who have publicly criticized harm-reduction programs
that ignore the need for treatment options were told of the
international event, much less invited to discuss why they believe
governments should adequately fund detox, stabilization and treatment
facilities before investing in harm-reduction schemes -- needle
exchanges, crack pipe give-aways, injection sites, that sort of thing.

Yet forum organizers from the University of Victoria's Centre for
Addictions Research didn't fail to add the Vancouver Area Network of
Drug Users to their guest list as well as harm-reduction cheerleaders
Philip Owen and Larry Campbell.

It's just a coincidence that the centre is also a known
harm-reduction advocate, isn't it? And that its website is long on
reducing the harms associated with drug use but short on measures
aimed at ending it?

And that its freshest research initiative claims Victoria -- which
has almost no recovery beds -- has an urgent need for a shooting
gallery, er, supervised-consumption site.

While sister conferences unfolding in other North American cities
appear open-minded, research centre folks boast of being the only
ones to invite supporters of harm-reduction and drug-policy reform.

All the more reason to ensure proponents of rehabilitation first,
harm-reduction second, are among them to generate open, frank discussion.

"If VANDU can suddenly speak for harm reduction internationally, why
can't people like myself and the Urban Core speak on treatment
recovery internationally?" Kieler e-mailed centre director Dan Reist.

Local matters, or the need for services, is not what this forum is
about, he replied. It's simply to gather ideas and collect
information related to international policy.

"The focus is on how NGOs can better engage with governments and UN agencies."

Fair enough, but the two-day talk-fest's specified goal -- mapped out
as a United Nations review of how to improve international
drug-control efforts -- was to solve the world's drug problems, not
solve the health issues related to them.

The Vancouver forum looks more like a rah-rah session for
harm-reduction buffs, and less like a world-class symposium aimed at
reviewing the UN's 1998 commitment to work towards a "drug-free world."

My prediction: Drug abuse in the Downtown Eastside will continue to
thrive, perhaps even grow, as long as the harm-reduction folk who
tout maintenance, rather than abstinence, control B.C.'s
billion-dollar addiction services industry.