COMPULSORY TREATMENT SHOULDN'T BE THE FIRST CHOICE

Everything old is new again sooner or later, as years in the news
business have taught me. So it's no surprise to see stories about
compulsory treatment for drug addicts making headlines again. With
almost 30 years gone since B.C. last gave compulsory treatment a try,
you just had to know the issue was due for a resurgence.

I have an acquaintance with both personal and professional experience
with addiction. Years ago in an interview, he regaled me with tales
of the unimaginably creative things people with addictions dreamed up
to get drugs into the places they were held in the years when B.C.
locked up addicts and forced them through treatment.

The best story involved details that are perhaps too lewd to go into
in a nice family newspaper, but suffice to say that it involved a
female addict, a stolen salt and pepper shaker refitted for a highly
unusual use, and somebody else's smuggled-in urine. Back in the late
1970s when B.C. tested compulsory treatment, there was apparently no
end to the innovative strategies employed by the desperately sick
inmates of the province's addiction internment camps.

It didn't work then and it won't now, because getting at an addiction
simply isn't as easy as locking up addicts until the drugs pass
through their system. At its root, addiction is about broken hearts
and shattered dreams, and lives that never quite worked out as they
were supposed to. It's about seeking something in drugs that your
troubled life just can't deliver on, and with a genetic
predisposition to boot. A few months toughing it out in drug jail
can't change much about that.

Hopelessness of effort aside, what might it be like to have
compulsory treatment for B.C.'s addicted population? First off, don't
count on any level of government to embrace the concept, because the
first thing that would be needed would be an enormous outlay of cash
to build thousands more treatment beds. Probably tens of thousands.

The cost would be staggering, to the point that the whole idea would
never get any farther than the first gigantic gasp of horror from
taxpayers. It's a bit like the raw-sewage issue here in Victoria: We
like the theory of doing something about the problem, but can't bear
to contemplate the cost. I doubt more than a single treatment centre
would get built without the government responsible being swept from
power at the first opportunity on a tide of angry public opinion.

And if that daunting problem could somehow be overcome, then the
rowdy zoning hearings would almost certainly finish off the plan.
Neighbours of future internment camps for addicts could be counted on
to go absolutely hysterical. Whole groups would spring up solely to
combat attempts to build a compulsory treatment centre in a specific
neighbourhood. Strange alliances would develop between those who
hated compulsory treatment out of fear it would ruin their
neighbourhood, and those who hated it because of the pointlessness
and inhumanity of forced treatment.

There would be no outskirts in any town that were far out enough to
stop unhappy property owners from rallying against whatever political
party dared to bring a compulsory treatment facility to their
community. Everyone living near a potential site would instantly
imagine desperate addicts breaking out of "jail," only to break into
their houses moments later seeking money to ease their sickness and
pain. And they'd probably be right.

Any politician who hadn't retreated on the issue during the initial
furore over costs would at this point abandon ship no matter what,
because nobody can risk hysterical neighbourhood associations and
human-rights groups fomenting rebellion. Whatever British Columbians
might think about compulsory treatment, the issue is a non-starter
politically in our province.

Is that it, then? Not at all. At the heart of the debate over
compulsory treatment is a belief that some people need significant
help in getting over their addiction, and that's a thought we need to
build on. B.C. currently has several thousand addicts and almost no
treatment, but the good news is that we don't have to break the bank
just to see progress. Much could be done with little more than a
network of small programs mixing housing and treatment, with stays
long enough for people to put some of their bigger demons behind them.

B.C. doesn't need compulsory treatment, it just needs treatment. Why
waste any time debating what to do with people who refuse treatment
when we don't even provide treatment for the ones who want it?

Someday, when there's treatment on demand for anyone who needs it, it
could turn out that we'll still need to have a conversation about
treating some people against their will. If somebody refuses all
services and becomes a public health risk, drastic measures could be needed.

But that's someday. First we need the services.