GOING BEYOND THE QUICK FIX

We Need To Do More To Help The Drug Addicts And Alcoholics In Our City Beat
Their Addictions.

There seems to be a real willingness to respond to crises caused by
addiction problems. The City of Ottawa's social housing agency is sending a
new squad of security guards into apartment buildings to end the
lawlessness that often involves illegal drugs and abuse of alcohol. There's
a seemingly unlimited amount of provincial government money that can be
spent on emergency-shelter beds for people with addictions. The police
budget jumps every year.

City public-health officials, with the support of the provincial
government, hand out clean needles and crack cocaine pipe equipment to drug
addicts in an attempt to reduce the transmission of deadly diseases among
addicts.

These are humane responses, but they are dealing with symptoms of a bigger
issue. We need to do more about the underlying problem. There are between
3,000 and 5,000 injection drug addicts in Ottawa, putting this city in the
same addiction league as Toronto and Vancouver.

Sit for a couple of days in the different courtrooms in the Elgin Street
courthouse and you'll get a sense that many of the break-and-enters,
assaults and family break-ups that tie up the justice system have a lot to
do with drug and alcohol addiction. Prostitution was once the scourge of
the Byward Market, leading to the closing off of entire streets to stop
johns from prowling. Now it is an affliction for neighbourhoods such as
Gladstone Avenue.

Former Dalhousie Ward city councillor Peter Harris says the prostitutes
were even cruising the streets on Easter Sunday. Prostitution is often
fuelled by the need for the next drug fix.

Addiction underpins so many social problems, taking a huge financial and
human toll. We need to get serious about it. That means supporting programs
that get people off of alcohol and drugs. It means supporting hospital and
university research into new treatment methods. And it means supporting
agencies in Ottawa that are working to help addicts build new lives for
themselves.

One such agency is Harvest House, which at any given time helps between 50
and 70 people deal with their addictions, develop some job skills and a
work ethic, before they re-join the community mainstream. Harvest House is
having a disagreement with the provincial government over financial support
and whether clients should be able to get social assistance while there.
That should not take away from the tremendous work this community
organization is doing.

We need more such initiatives that will change people's lives, rather than
just giving addicts a place to sleep it off, and clean tools for their drug
use. We need to build hope.