VANCOUVER'S DOWNTOWN EASTSIDE A CAUTIONARY TALE FOR OTTAWA, OFFICER SAYS

Harm-Reduction Programs Wrong Way to Go, Inspector Warns

Ottawa's commitment to helping drug addicts could put the city on a
perilous path to creating a version of Vancouver's notorious Downtown
Eastside, a senior Vancouver police officer who spent five years
policing the infamous strip warns.

After twice touring the city's downtown core with Ottawa police
officers and seeing first-hand the capital's growing crack cocaine
problem, Insp. John Mc-Kay says he sees signs of Ottawa's becoming a
haven for open drug abuse, street prostitution and crime if the
city's drug strategy doesn't balance harm-reduction initiatives --
like the controversial crack-pipe program -- with strong enforcement,
treatment and prevention.

Insp. McKay's warning comes one month before Ottawa's community and
protective services committee is expected to be presented with a
comprehensive and detailed strategy to combat drug abuse, prepared by
a group of more than 60 agencies known as the Community Network.

The first phase of the plan, based on what is known as a "four
pillars" approach, was unanimously approved by city council last year.

Insp. McKay recently told a committee working on the city's
Integrated Drugs and Addictions Strategy that, in the opinion of
frontline officers, Vancouver's "four pillars" approach was "a failed
social experiment" that put too much emphasis on one pillar -- harm
reduction -- and didn't pay enough attention to the other three
pillars -- treatment, enforcement and prevention.

"You do not want to go down this road because you will ruin this
city," says Insp. McKay, who spent five years as the inspector in
charge of the Downtown Eastside and is now the executive officer to
Vancouver police Chief Jamie Graham.

But Alfred Cormier, who co-chairs the Community Network's issues and
planning committee and is a program consultant with the Centre for
Addiction and Mental Health, says there are important differences
between Ottawa and Vancouver.

While Ottawa is second only to Vancouver for the highest rates of HIV
and hepatitis C among injection-drug users, there are no plans to set
up controversial safe-injection sites in the capital, Mr. Cormier said.

He says Ottawa has also added a fifth "pillar" to the strategy -- an
integrated and co-ordinated effort to put its plan into action.

"As long as we are measuring whether we are able to make a
difference, that might be the insurance to prevent us from getting
into a situation that degenerates into an environment like the
Vancouver Downtown Eastside," he says. "If we are not making
progress, then we change course."

George Langill, one of the co-chairs of the Community Network, adds
the drug strategy they plan on proposing is "more of a made-in-Ottawa
solution than anything else that has already been done."

Mr. Langill, who spent 30 years as chief executive at what was then
the Royal Ottawa Hospital before retiring in 2005, said the Ottawa
strategy will offer solutions unique to the situation in the capital
region, paying special attention to existing social services in
Ottawa, language and cultural issues and the areas to which
drug-addicted people are migrating.

He believes there is no reason to move away from an integrated
approach that includes harm-reduction initiatives designed to reduce
the spread of diseases through drug-addicted populations.

But Insp. McKay believes the warning signs of a future problem --
abandoned and boarded up buildings, open crack use, an increasing
population of drug users, some of whom are mentally ill, and social
services that are all in close proximity -- are already evident, and
will only get worse.

Next, he says, the city could see drug "tourists" who flock to the
city because they know their hits are readily available here, and the
rise of the "survival sex trade," as women addicted to crack cocaine
turn to street prostitution to pay for their habit.

"Harm reduction for drug addicts is harm production for everyone
else," says Insp.

McKay, adding that harm-reduction measures like Ottawa's crack-pipe
program are a "Band-Aid solution" that is a "cheap" way to avoid
legitimate treatment and prevention.

Vancouver's drug policy coordinator, Don MacPherson, says Insp. McKay
is a "renegade" and does not represent the Vancouver police, a force
that has recently approved its own drug strategy that embraces harm
reduction and the four-pillar approach.

According to Mr. MacPherson, Vancouver spends more than four times as
much money on treatment and prevention than it does on harm reduction.

"Of the $26 million that goes into drug treatment a year in
Vancouver, a total of $5 million goes into harm reduction, $3 million
goes to prevention and the rest goes to drug treatment," he says.

"It's just the usual harm reduction attack that we get from some
police," says Mr. MacPherson of Insp. McKay's position, adding that
some officers have a "child-like fantasy" that people will stop using drugs.

Former Ottawa police Chief Vince Bevan was a vocal critic of the
crack-pipe program, saying it encourages drug use and may even be illegal.

Frontline officers also disapprove of the program, saying it doesn't
work because users disregard the parts of the crack-pipe kits meant
to prevent the spread of disease and still share the dirty pipes.

Jasna Jennings, executive director of the Byward Market Business
Improvement Area, reported a "visible increase" in the amount of open
drug use in the downtown core.

"It's not like they are walking among the vendors smoking their crack
pipes, but they are in public areas," she says, adding the BIA's
street ambassadors reported more than a 600-per-cent increase in the
number of incidents in which patrollers saw open drug use.

There were 131 incidents of open drug use observed in the summer of
2006 compared with 18 the year before, Ms. Jennings says. The
majority of those incidents occurred on the Waller Street pedestrian mall.

Despite that, Ms. Jennings says she doesn't believe downtown Ottawa
is in any danger of becoming the Downtown Eastside.

"That is a really extreme situation," she says. "The face of
addiction is changing, and it is something everyone needs to
acknowledge is there and do whatever they can to try and curb it, to
stop it and halt its expansion."