30 YEARS ON, WE'VE MADE LITTLE PROGRESS IN TREATING ADDICTS

The Sunday edition of The Vancouver Sun ran with the headline: "Heroin
bigger business than fisheries." It was Feb. 12, 1972!

In more than 30 years, we've pretty much managed to destroy the local
fishing industry, but there is absolutely no argument that the illegal drug
trade is flourishing more than ever. Yet the 1972 story was written before
cocaine, marijuana grow-ops, methamphetamines and AIDS.

The headline for Feb. 24, 2004: "Vancouver is Canada's drug warehouse
distribution center." Now that's progress.

During this same period, the provincial addictions system of care has
undergone seven or eight major reorganizations. It feels like we've been
"reorganizing" for 20 of the past 30 years.

The last significant increase in treatment funding occurred in 1988 when
the provincial government doubled it. But many existing treatment programs
have virtually had their budgets frozen for years. While some new services
have been developed, other treatment programs around the province have been
forced to close or reduce services, with some communities losing major
programs entirely.

Without proper financial support, the prevention and treatment components
of the four-pillar approach will collapse, and with it our entire approach
to dealing with drug addiction.

Most of the media attention this problem gets revolves around the harm
reduction and law enforcement pillars. If it doesn't involve safe injection
sites, prescribed heroin or police crackdowns, we never seem to hear about
it. Studies place the number of addicts in the Downtown Eastside at 5,000.
But there are more than three million people in B.C. over the age of 15.
Probably 10 per cent, or 300,000 are being affected by this problem in one
way or another and could benefit from some type of professional help.

But many of those who desperately need treatment and are not able to access
services in their communities continue their downward spiral and eventually
migrate downtown, where their problems are exacerbated. So 5,000 addicts on
the eastside of Vancouver, representing less than five per cent of those
affected by substance abuse provincially, garner 95 per cent of our attention.

Addictions and their related problems rival cancer and heart disease as the
western world's most damaging and costly health problems. Yet, the
prevention and treatment of substance abuse has never been a high priority
for any of our governments.

In fact, the 2000 auditor-general's report on Canada's national drug
strategy indicated that 94 per cent of our national resources went to
enforcement and supply reduction, and was highly critical of the
government's strategy. A while ago I asked a former provincial health and
then finance minister just why addiction services got so little attention
from the government. The former minister replied, "If you can't resolve the
problem within our four-year mandate, it just isn't going to get our
attention."

I was astonished by such candour and appalled by such "impaired judgment."

The most comprehensive studies ever undertaken on the cost benefits of drug
treatment consistently indicate that for every dollar spent on treatment,
$7 to $10 are saved in related health/hospital, criminal justice, child
welfare and insurance costs. That's a 700-to-1,000-per-cent cost benefit.

Yet the resources provided for addressing this problem are pathetically
inadequate. No matter how many detox centres, safe injection sites, drug
courts or prescribed heroin programs we have, without proper provisions for
longer-term treatment programs all of these harm reduction initiatives will
be seriously undermined.

In 1988, there were only 20 intensive residential treatment beds for youth
in the province; today there are 12. Waiting times for treatment are
common, and can be as long as six months. The only government-funded
intensive residential treatment program on Vancouver Island was closed more
than a year ago and not replaced. When it comes to long-term residential
treatment programs, the kind of service that many of the addicts downtown
will need if they decide to quit, we have absolutely nothing.

While some new and innovative programs are initiated, it's often a sad case
of "robbing Peter to pay Paul," as one essential service is closed in order
to fund a new one.

Recently, the provincial government raised the tax on alcohol by 7.2 per
cent, which will raise an additional $55 million each year. If only 20 per
cent of that money were spent on treatment, based on the lower figure of $7
saved for every dollar spent on rehab, we would save millions every year.
Surely that money could be better spent on improving health care and saving
more lives.

Never before in our history has the issue of substance misuse been more
prominent. The production of illicit drugs funds terrorist activities
around the world, it is the driving force behind endless civil wars, and
the misuse of these substances, particularly alcohol, is the catalyst for
nearly all domestic violence and child abuse.

It is precisely this never-ending cycle of domestic violence and childhood
abuse that keeps creating new generations of addicts. Our continued failure
to adequately address this enormous problem is one of the major reasons
that families are torn apart, and is one of the primary reasons for human
suffering, and the degradation of the human spirit.