CONTINUING THE 'WAR ON DRUGS' IS NOT HELPING THE ADDICTED

Cocaine or crack cocaine started to be distributed in large quantities
in Vancouver in 1995. Along with heroin, crack led to increased
transmission of HIV-AIDS and hepatitis C and to premature deaths from
overdoses.

Crime, especially home and car break-ins, skyrocketed as addicts
sought money for their habit.

It became obvious very quickly that we had already lost the war on
drugs -- a war that we had been fighting for almost 100 years when we
first banned cocaine in 1908. To save our children, young people and
adults who were the victims of the drug dealers, we needed a different
strategy that was supported by the community.

In 1996, the city of Vancouver started consulting with experts from
around the world. Every expert we consulted who was dealing directly
with the problems associated with drug addiction led us to the same
conclusion.

Those who are addicted are our children, siblings, fathers and mothers
who did not choose a life of addiction, illness, crime and eventual
early death. They are the victims and they require medical assistance.

The question for the city was whether it should embrace this humane
and medical approach to drug addiction. Every few years we revisit
this same debate. Our country is revisiting it now.

Should we end support for medical approaches that recognize that
addicts are ill, and that the drug dealers are evil, and go back to
the war on drugs? Or do we build on the successes we have had over the
past five years with the medical approach?

There are those, especially at the federal level, who support the
crime and punishment approach. They are uncomfortable with the tools
used in the medical approach to addiction, especially with treatment
and harm reduction strategies. They ask that we have more police on
the streets, more lawyers and judges in the courtrooms and more space
in our jails.

In 2001, Vancouver opted for the alternative approach -- treating drug
addiction as a medical problem. Vancouver adopted a four pillars
approach -- prevention, treatment, enforcement and harm reduction.
This approach does not have the 100-year record of the war on drugs,
but Vancouver has five years of experience in implementing it.

With the cooperation of the federal government, we opened a supervised
injection site in downtown Vancouver in 2003. The most recent study of
the effects of this site shows that it reduces public disorder, refers
users to addiction counselling, saves lives and improves health
because it significantly reduces needle sharing. We are now planning a
detox centre that will be part of the injection site so that we can
provide service by intervening at the most critical time.

It has been difficult to improve the quality of life of the ill when
the first battle had to be against the prejudice of decision-makers
who preferred to see the immorality of drug use rather then the
immorality of abandoning our fellow citizens to illness and early death.

To keep moving forward we need leadership at the federal level. Every
mayor in every large city in Canada knows that the social problems
associated with homelessness, such as inadequate housing choices,
adequate supports for those suffering mental illness, adequate shelter
beds, detox units and treatment centres are intimately tied up with
drugs and addiction.

Thirty years ago our nation began to treat tobacco addiction as a
medical problem. We put in harm reduction, treatment, prevention and
enforcement programs. It has taken a long time, but we have reduced
tobacco use to 19 per cent of the population from a high of 35 per
cent in 1985.

We are beginning to see the benefits of this approach in lower rates
of chronic disease, lower health care costs and longer lives, among
other examples. This approach worked because Ottawa took a leadership
role in seeing that addiction to this drug (nicotine) was a medical
condition, not a character flaw.

Now the federal government must take a leadership role in combating
drug addiction across Canada as it did with tobacco. It must support
all four pillars if the program is to be successful. That includes
support for Vancouver's supervised injection site.

In the end, it is scientific fact and medical evidence, not rigid
political ideology, that should guide our public policy decisions.