MLA WANTS TO SHIP ADDICTS TO A RURAL TOUGH-LOVE FACILITY

But The Italian Model He Advocates Has Drawn Serious Criticism

On Friday, at the Four Seasons Hotel, Vancouver Burrard MLA Lorne
Mayencourt will address the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement
Association about drug addiction.

He will talk about an Italian community by the name of San
Patrignano. It is near Rimini on the Adriatic coast.

His talk is significant because San Patrignano is being championed in
some quarters as an alternative to localized drug addiction therapy.
They want the establishment of a large Riverview-like facility where
addicts are sequestered away from the general populace and put to work.

This last January, Mayencourt visited San Patrignano and came away
convinced that its brand of therapy would work here for our
population of crystal meth addicts. San Patrignano, off in the
Italian countryside, is considered the largest drug addiction
therapeutic community in Europe, and Mayencourt, who said one
university study found it had a 70-per-cent success rate, would like
to see a similar institution established somewhere in the Fraser Valley.

That bucolic vision also happens to agree with that of urban
prohibitionists who are angry at the prospect of drug addiction
treatment centres and housing being built in city neighbourhoods, and
who would prefer to see such facilities outside the city.
(Mayencourt, by the way, said he did not subscribe solely to that
view, and said such facilities, such as the 30-bed triage residence
being built at Fraser and 41st, were needed.)

San Patrignano's approach is decidedly tough-love. At any one time,
it can house on its grounds about 2,000 clients, and those grounds
have boundaries that clients are expected to observe. Clients can
sometimes be there three or four years in recovery.

It operates on donations and on the profit from the sale of goods the
community produces. Clients of San Patrignano are put to work when
they get there, the idea being that learning trades and crafts not
only acts as therapy but provides addicts with employable skills when
they reintegrate into society.

(It is also strictly for drug addicts. It does not accept alcoholics,
the mentally ill or dual-diagnosed patients -- those with both a
mental illness and an addiction.)

San Patrignano, however, did have its critics.

One was Dr. Giancarlo Arnao, who, before his death in 2000, was
president of the International Anti-Prohibitionist League, and a
physician with over 30 years involvement in drug policy research.

In an essay entitled Drug Policy and Ideology, Arnao wrote about San
Patrignano's tough-love methods and of its charismatic founder,
Vincenzo Muccioli.

"The enormous popularity of Muccioli," Arnao wrote, "was fully
displayed in 1984, when he was tried for putting some addicts in chains."

He was acquitted. But there was more. In April, 1989, according to
Arnao, the corpse of a San Patrignano client, Roberto Maranzano, was
found in a garbage disposal bin near Naples, 600 kilometres from San
Patrignano. His death was attributed to a drug deal.

"But four years later," wrote Arnao, "some former inmates of the
community confessed that Mr. Maranzano had been killed in a
punishment section of the community by another inmate, a 'guard'; the
victim had been tortured and beaten to death for two days, and his
corpse was carried away in a community-owned car; moreover, the
medical examiner stated that Mr. Maranzano had been injected with
heroin while he was still alive. Mr. Muccioli initially pretended to
ignore the fact, then he admitted that he knew about the crime, but
he didn't inform the police because he didn't want to scare the
inmates of the community."

In October, 1994, Arnao wrote, Muccioli was tried for the murder of
Maranzano. He was acquitted. But:

"During the trial many San Patrignano inmates or former inmates
testified that the Community was ruled with a high level of violence
. . . In November, 1994, Muccioli was found not guilty of murder but
guilty of complicity in hiding the corpse of Maranzano, and was given
a light suspended sentence of eight months in jail."

Muccioli died in 1995 but his philosophy endured. His approach was
popular with the public. The government embraced the model, and San
Patrignano thrived and expanded.

Did Mayencourt know about the Arnao essay and the disturbing events
it described?

Yes, he said, he had read it.

"[The events Arnao described are] not something I endorse or like, or
anything like that. But I also thought it was important to see, does
[San Patrignano] work? And it does."

He also said he had seen no evidence of coercion or questionable
practices during his visit there. Italians, he said, speak glowingly
of it. So did Mayencourt, who said he believed addicts would respond
best to treatment away from the distractions of the city.

On the other hand, you have the cautionary voice of Arnao, who would
warn us to consider not only the addicted but the dangers inherent in
their treatment. And given the present frustration in Vancouver on
the subject of drugs, the homeless et al, I had to wonder how a local
version of a San Patrignano -- with its removal of addicts to the
countryside -- would really be seen here.

As therapy, or street-cleaning?

And does it matter anymore?