UBC's 'EXPERTS' ON ADDICTION POLICY ARE ALL SINGING THE
SAME OLD TUNE

The wise and the good at UBC are sending into our humble midst certain
luminaries to broaden our horizons in matters of drug policy.

The first in a series of weekly forums, organized by the university
"to increase public dialogue about the escalating problem of drug
use," took place yesterday.

This should be splendid news. UBC, a world centre of excellence, is
surely a bubbling cauldron of creative ideas well suited to addressing
the misery of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

So who are these worthies the university has lined up for our
edification? According to Stephen Owen, one-time Liberal MP and now
UBC vice-president for community relations, they represent "a wide
spectrum of perspectives and research knowledge." But a quick perusal
of the marquee names will temper any rash expectations of original
thinking. They include former Vancouver mayors Philip Owen and Larry
Campbell, who for years have propped up the tottering columns of the
Four Pillars approach, with its emphasis on "harm reduction." The
university's own contribution to the forum is Richard Mathias,
professor in the faculty of medicine and also a believer in giving
addicts the drugs they need to lessen the harm they do themselves and
others.

And there's a representative from UVic's Centre for Addictions
Research, one of whose recent projects was tellingly titled:
"Feasibility study for supervised drug consumption options in
Victoria." So what happened to the promised "wide spectrum" of ideas?
Seems to me UBC is merely lending its prestigious imprimatur to the
drug-policy orthodoxy of the day. It's fortifying a fifth pillar --
the pillar of political correctness.

There's nothing sinister about Four Pillars. It's a compassionate
ideology that views addiction as a health problem, not a criminal
matter. But its academic advocates tend to be a self-regarding lot,
with no patience for heretics who dare to whisper abstinence as an
alternative approach to addiction.

Their resumes, flush with the fruits of forays into needle-strewn
alleys, list learned papers "proving" that a "public health" approach
to addiction is working.

But what we see in the Downtown Eastside tells a different
story.

For example, after six years of "public health" initiatives, we were
told last week a dangerous superbug is rampaging through the drug community.

Given the reality, you can't blame people for being skeptical about
the diversion of health dollars to mopping the fevered brows of
addicts as they ready a clean needle for their next fix. Not when
single mothers with diabetic kids have to dig into their meagre
resources to pay for medical supplies. Not when elderly patients
writhe in pain because of surgeries endlessly postponed.

Not when the one thing we never hear from the so-called addiction
experts is the kind of advice we can understand: "Once you've decided
to quit, we'll do everything in our power to help."