CRACKING OPEN OTTAWA'S DRUG PROBLEM

At a public meeting Monday evening, a crowd of roughly 100 assembled
to talk about the city's street-drug problem, a persistent ill
visibly afflicting our downtown.

Organized by the Ottawa Police Services Board, it was attended by a
smattering of city councillors, a handful of senior police officers
and a number of community groups. Much was said during the two-hour
session. One remark, tellingly, drew the loudest cheer.

"We cancelled the crack-pipe program," said Mayor Larry O'Brien,
acknowledging drug addiction as a "complicated, difficult" problem
and citing the need for a teen residential treatment centre. "This is
not just a fight," the mayor said. "It is a war." The crack-pipe
program, in fact, has never gone away, though it was forced to find
alternate funding after the city withdrew its annual contribution of
roughly $7,500.

No matter. It still makes for good politics, better optics.

And this is the jam we're in.

Few issues facing the city today cause such a deep divide or lead to
a bigger emotional reaction than the response of public agencies to
drug addiction.

It is a muddle.

On provincial orders, we give needles and crack kits to drug addicts,
in the name of harm reduction. It is a counter-intuitive step -- with
the power to horrify -- but supported by solid medical evidence.

The needles, by the hundreds, are discarded on streets, parks, school
yards and alleyways. So, a harm-reduction program becomes a public
hazard and -- to visitors to the capital -- a potential
embarrassment. This is not good.

The city then hires someone to pick them up, though many are missed.
City Hall then begins to feel the heat from moms finding them in the park.

Meanwhile, infection rates among Ottawa intravenous addicts -- the
whole point for the harm reduction strategy -- are among the highest
in Canada. So what gives?

The addicts, 3,000 to 5,000 strong, are committing crimes to support
their habit, turning to prostitution, panhandling aggressively, and
using drugs in quasi-public places or in crack houses. Crack, we are
told, is cheaper than beer.

The police, meanwhile, are in the middle of it all: called to every
problem along the food chain, from vagrancy to grow-ops to crack
houses to organized drug rings. And every day, the meeting was told,
police see the same faces, suffering the same fate: addicts using
publicly available equipment to fall further into despair.

It is easy to understand the police frustration.

It is, isn't it, the old question: is drug addiction a law
enforcement problem or a matter of health-care treatment?

The city, in fact, has a "four-pillar" strategy: prevention,
treatment, harm reduction and enforcement.

We are, evidently, better at some parts than others. While needles
are available by the thousands -- 300,000 a year -- treatment,
especially residential treatment, is severely rationed.

Waiting lists for treatment can be in the hundreds. There is no
in-house treatment centre in Ottawa for young people under 17, which
seems criminal.

The public debate has taken on a strange texture, too. The mayor
lauds part of the strategy while trashing another.

It is apparent, as well, that no figure has been more influential in
the discussion during the last year than Police Chief Vern White, who
is seen as a godsend to neighbourhoods on the front lines.

He is a smart man, with a keen political radar.

The chief, not even a year on the job, has dedicated officers where
they have the most impact. More beat cops downtown, a street crime
unit, periodic street sweeps, open lines to community groups,
quasi-social work with addicts.

He has set himself up, oddly enough, as perhaps the strongest
advocate for a youth residential treatment program, though you wonder
why it falls to him.

While the chief obviously has strong opinions on harm-reduction
policies, he is careful to say that enforcement is only part of the solution.

"We come from different places," he told the meeting.

Indeed. He comes from the place with a Criminal Code and handcuffs.

Where, one wonders, is the city's champion on the treatment side? Who
advocates for the addict?

The treatment centre -- 48 beds is the figure most often cited -- is
also held out as the ultimate solution.

Why? How does 48 beds for teenagers put a serious dent in an
addiction population that exceeds 3,000?

There is one other reality that no one at Monday's meeting mentioned:
it is a fallacy that all the city's addicts are ready and willing to
leap into treatment. They don't think rationally -- they're drug addicts.

We're supposed to do the smart thinking, not let the cops carry the
can, or the mayor muddy the waters.