HELPLESS AND HOPELESS OVER DRUG SCOURGE

Re: Drug deal done in front of police chief got crackdown going, Feb. 23

Why is this pathetic item worthy of front-page mention? It speaks much
more of a breakdown than a crackdown.

I read through the article several times, my outrage growing, slapped
paragraph by paragraph with blatant evidence of the unimpeded grip
that drug traffickers hold over our city, and the utter ineptitude of
our current approach to deal with the problem.

Living with the pain of losing my son to drugs, I have long despaired
that there is any actual support or protection within Vancouver in
particular, or Canada, to make any significant difference.

I now rarely follow attemps to affect drug traffickers, and believe
there are seldom any newsworthy successes to report, anyway.

I acknowledge that I have found the magnitude of the problem daunting.
I, along with what appears to be the majority of citizens, live lulled
into a trance of complacency.

Face it, the traffickers are in utter and complete control.

What is going on that Jamie Graham, our police chief, is reduced to
removing drugs from the hand of a female drug addict after the
transaction took place under his nose?

And, of course there was no action taken, no mention made, of the
person who sold the drug under his nose.

I am well aware that one pitiful letter about one pitiful event is
indeed a sorry attempt to address an enormous and overwhelmingly
complex issue.

Maybe our police chief feels as helpless and hopeless as I do about
this.

Maybe it was out of sheer desperation that the most powerful law
officer in our city was reduced to struggling on the street to take
drugs out of an addict's hand.