DRUG CULTURE CREATES SUFFERING AND ANGER

For more than five years south-end residents have been putting up with
more than any neighbourhood deserves.

This week, the problems of drug abuse, crime and the sex trade were
put into sharp focus after a 26-year-old woman was found dead near a
public telephone on Haliburton Street. Foul play is not suspected, but
the woman was known to be a substance abuser.

Unfortunately, the Daily News website has seen comments that can only
be described as lacking compassion.

There is bound to be anger over the daily grind of misery and chaos
inflicted on residents, but comments like "one down, 1,000 to go" --
as left on our website -- only reflect a type of ignorance that
compounds the problem.

And this is a huge problem that spans such diverse areas as social
change, the law and the police, community response, lack of government
funding and organized crime.

Perhaps it's easiest to begin looking at this scenario in a profit and
loss context. The only people profiting are those in organized crime.
There are people at the top of the chain, who import cocaine by the
tonne and think nothing of dropping $10,000 for a weekend in Whistler.

The question comes back again and again why these people are not
arrested. Quite simply they use extreme violence and the law to
insulate themselves. They hire lawyers to give them advice on how not
to get caught, they bribe and coerce and have absolutely no conscience.

The police know who these scumbags are and quietly work away at
collecting evidence. And we're not just talking about outlaw
motorcycle gangs here. Many independent operators are now very active.

But even if they are caught and prosecuted, there are another dozen
up-and-coming drug dealers ready to replace them. Maybe we do need to
amend our constitution if it is allowing such activities to go on
mostly unhindered.

Critics say that will cost us important freedoms. Good point. But we
don't want our freedoms compromised by drug dealers either.

On the loss side of the ledger, first and foremost, are those like the
26-year-old woman who died a most undignified death on Haliburton
Street. Whenever something like this happens, we all lose because it's
true that the real measure of a healthy society is how well its most
vulnerable citizens are treated.

But there are also the angry residents who see their standard of life
lowered by such activities. That translates into money to then beef up
enforcement and create an adequate social response.

In that regard the response designed by the city, and involving
various agencies, deserves to be acknowledged. Much of the work is
designed around the sad reality that many homeless and drug-addicted
people here and all over the province suffer from mental health problems.

Police recognize this is not just an enforcement issue, and social
workers realize that the people they see often need mental health
expertise. And the city, through various plans, is doing what it can
to accommodate a strategy aimed at facilitating harm reduction and
maintaining law and order on the streets.

That, however, is a challenge given the drastic cuts made to social
programs by the provincial government in the past six years. Cuts to
social assistance and housing subsidies mean that people who once
would have at least had a room are now on the street. And continued
under funding of health authorities means that mental health workers
don't have the resources they need to make an effective change.

That lack of funding translates into a lack of programs for those in
need of mental health resources, and long waits for those in need of
detox and treatment. Some resources are there, but not nearly enough
to alleviate concerns in neighbourhoods like Nanaimo's south end.

This is a huge problem with no solutions -- only effective actions.