WHY WE MAY BE TACKLING DRUGS THE WRONG WAY

Prevention And Treatment Come First, Critics Say

Faith-based charities helping addicts in Vancouver's skid row are not
the only ones to question the almost blind fixation on harm reduction
at the expense of prevention and recovery.

Many of the officers deployed to police the grimy results of
destitution and prostitution in the Downtown Eastside are also
troubled by the glaring absence of programs aimed at helping -- and
if necessary forcing -- druggies to get clean.

Indeed, much-needed funds to establish treatment and recovery
facilities for hardcore users isn't even a blip on the radar of
advocates for harm reduction -- an ideology that addresses the health
and social problems associated with drug use but not the use itself.

"Front line officers were not convinced but we reluctantly supported
[the supervised injection site] because it was supposed to be a
comprehensive strategy designed to make a difference," Vancouver
police union representative Tom Stamatakis told me this week.

"Where is the focus on prevention and treatment -- with treatment
being the most important and most under-committed?"

Critics of the current preoccupation with harm reduction -- needle
exchanges, injections sites, that kind of thing -- say we ain't seen
nothing yet. Legalization of drugs is next on the agenda if the
boards of publicly funded drug-policy groups, such as the Canadian
Centre on Substance Abuse and the House Committee on Illegal Drugs,
continue to be influenced or controlled by HR buffs.

Dr. Colin Mangham, one of Canada's top addiction specialists, agrees
federal and provincial governments as well as the Vancouver Coastal
Health Authority are ignoring the dire need for prevention and
treatment. He says HR libertarians are steering the nation's drug policy now.

"Harm reduction has so permeated governments and the civil service
and so politicized drug policy that evidence against [it] is being
ignored, information is being managed in support of it, voices in
opposition are decreasingly being included in drug-policy dialogue,"
he warned in a policy paper released last January.

"Canada's drug policy has become vulnerable to the drug-legalization
movement. This can only harm efforts to reduce drug problems."

But would legalization and regulation of drugs be a bad thing? After
all, tobacco and alcohol are legal.

"One of the most serious drawbacks of legalization is its virtual
irreversibility," Mangham says.

"Preventing a bad habit is far easier than getting rid of one."

The B.C. physician lists a host of reasons why drug-legalization
won't fix the country's drug-use problem:

- - Legalization sends a message to kids that drug use is acceptable.

- - Violent crime committed by users of psychoactive drugs will rise.

- - Organized crime won't leave town; it will turn to other
profit-generating crimes, as it did when alcohol-prohibition was repealed.

- - Addicts who commit crimes for cash do so not just for drug money.
Many are jobless and have no legal source of income.

- - The black market will continue to exist unless all currently
illegal drugs are available, free, to everyone in unlimited
quantities and combinations. Supplied drugs would have to be of the
highest purity because users seek the highest high.

- - Studies indicate if adults use drugs at home, kids are likely to too.

- - Moderate users may increase intake, developing a tolerance to the
drug with increased use.

- - Sure, tobacco and booze kill many more Canadians than do illegal
drugs, but that's because they're legal and easily accessible.
Besides, with two dangerous "legal" drugs, do we really need more?

- - Illegality of drugs is a deterrent, studies show. Remove the
deterrent and usage will climb.

- - Revenue generated by taxing drugs would be quickly gobbled up by
the increased social costs for health and treatment services, family
violence, child abuse and impaired-driving accidents.

Mangham calls on the authorities to bolster treatment programs and
the mechanisms required to get addicts into them. He advocates
compulsory abstinence and treatment, if need be, for those who break
the law or who put themselves and/or others at risk.