DRUGS AND PROSTITUTION ARE HEALTH, NOT CRIME, ISSUES

We are only four hours north of Victoria, what McLean's magazine sited
as Canada's most dangerous city.

It is no wonder that homelessness, poverty, mental illness, drug
addiction and prostitution is alive and well in Campbell River. Some
of it is hidden in the confines of cheap apartments, homeless
shelters, transition houses, the forest, the caves along the
waterfront, in campers, vehicles, under tarps, and in drug houses.
Some of it is fairly prevalent now, and it is impacting our
businesses, homes, our incomes, and the feelings of safety and security.

While we may choose to deliver our "get out of town" message straight
to the drug dealers and prostitutes via posses with video cameras, you
won't solve the problem by putting people in jail or forcibly moving
them out of your area.

I think establishing the drug and prostitution trades as poverty and
public health issues rather than as a crime issue might go a long way
towards really solving this problem for everyone concerned. People
have to be let out of jail sometime, if they go at all, and since it
is the government that has made choices to put them where they are, it
is the government that has to make a choice to deal with this issue so
it goes away for good. This starts with an aggressive action plan to
house and support the mentally ill, addicted, and homeless. Remove the
barriers between society and those in need.

If the local government does not have the authority or money to do it,
then it is their responsibility to aggressively advocate for our city.
They must put pressure on the provincial and federal governments who
do have the authority and money to do it. And they do have the money.
We must not wait until it is in all of our backyards. Be preemptive
and just assume it will be. They have to go somewhere.

It is a fact that homelessness and drug addiction are closely related
to mental illness.

Each homeless person costs BC taxpayers $55,000 a year, a new study
has found. That is an annual cost of $644.3 million in health,
corrections and social services spending for all homeless people in
the province.

What if that money was spent on social housing, mental health and
addictions supports?

If housing and support were offered to these people, it would cost
$37,000 a year, not $55,000. In the money saved from courts, jails,
hospitals, and shelters, tax payers actually end up significantly
ahead. If support was available, many of the homeless and addicts and
prostitutes would change their situation all round. We would all benefit.

These results do not contradict what other similar studies have
said.

We all disagree endlessly about why the poor are poor and what, if
anything, the rest of us should do about it. Many blame poor people
themselves, stressing mistakes or bad character, while others point to
what they consider an unjust society. And a lot of us can go either
way, case by case.

In almost every case, within just a few minutes of conversation, you
can identify the mistakes that led to a poor person's troubles: child
poverty, child abuse, drug or alcohol addiction, teen pregnancy,
criminal trouble, failure in school, lack of access to higher
education, undiagnosed or untreated learning disabilities, untreated
mental illness, or bad luck.

I've also noticed that the people who pay the biggest price for such
mistakes, who wind up as poor adults, are the ones who lacked a
cushion to recover from their poor choices - that is, those who grew
up poor, those who got lost in the education or health care system,
and those who lack a family supports.

It is embarrassing, given our overall level of affluence that people
in our community have to prostitute themselves, not as a chosen
career, but because they have no other way to make money, for
themselves, for their families, or for their pimps. Life as a street
prostitute is a grisly existence. There is an extremely high
prevalence of lifetime violence and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Ninety percent have been assaulted and/or raped, homeless with housing
as one of their most urgent needs. Eighty two percent need treatment
for drug or alcohol addictions. Ninety two percent of the prostitutes
surveyed wanted out of the sex industry but lacked the financial means
to support themselves.

It is time to respect each other, no matter who we are or where we
come from. We need to help people if they cannot help themselves.
Desperation and indignities have not been lost on those we look down
on. "Hookers, druggies and crazies" are people's mothers daughters
sisters, fathers, sons, and brothers, and yes, it is up to us to keep
them. They have souls and emotions. They are humiliated, hurt,
embarrassed and scared every day. They are all trying to survive , to
get by to live another day.

I agree that those who are drunk or high in public and causing a
disturbance should be arrested, as should others who display
threatening, intimidating and criminal behavior.But what can we expect
when we are putting people on the street with serious problems. There
are people in our community whose mental illnesses have either been
unrecognized, ignored, under treated, languished on waiting lists, or
treated and released into the world to get along by themselves. There
are people who just do not have enough money, either through welfare,
minimum wages or no hope of getting either, to eat, to have shelter,
to live. There are people who are just so humiliated, traumatized,
hurting, that they take the first drink, toke, snort, or i.v.
injection just to not have to think about their pathetic, painful
lives, and it is all downhill from there.

The studies, the close connections between all the issues we are
complaining about, and our humanity, gives us the just cause to make
our community safe and sound for everyone.