MY CURE FOR ADDICTION: ENFORCED ABSTINENCE

As someone who's suffered more than his fair share of addictions, I have a
solution to the drug problem in Greater Vancouver.

It's called abstinence.

And I can vouch for the fact that it works well with that most stubbornly
addictive of all drugs, namely nicotine.

Indeed, enforcing abstinence (with 12 steps, if needed) is at least as
effective in treating addicts as is encouraging them to continue to poison
themselves at taxpayer's expense.

After all, the government's goal should be to help B.C.'s 20,000-odd
addicts kick the habit, not remain in drug slavery.

Why then do our politicians spend so little time promoting tried-and-true,
abstinence-based drug programs -- and so much time pushing
politically-correct "harm reduction" schemes that give addicts little or no
incentive to quit?

Vancouver Mayor Philip Owen seems to think it's a "huge step" forward that
Health Canada has endorsed the idea of setting up "safe-injection sites"
(an oxymoron if there ever was one).

And the three leading candidates to succeed Owen, including right-wing NPA
councillor Jennifer Clarke, have been tripping over themselves falling in line.

The pull of the feel-good, give-the-addicts-what-they-want agenda being
orchestrated by Owen, in concert with a gaggle of media groupies, has
proven too strong to resist. Neither of the three has had the stomach to
battle this city's slavishness to trends.

Indeed, anyone attempting to blunt the self-righteous crusade -- like
police Sgt. Al Arsenault (who states wisely that "addicts need the cure,
not the poison") -- is dismissed as a wacko.

Just ask veteran social worker John Turvey, executive director of the
Downtown Eastside Youth Activities Society, who in 1988 set up Canada's
first needle exchange. It was a "harm-reduction" scheme that was also
touted by the chattering classes as a drug panacea.

Well, folks, it didn't turn out that way. And a decade later it didn't
prevent the Downtown Eastside from developing what St. Paul's Hospital
addiction medicine chief Dr. Stan de Vlaming has called "the highest rate
of HIV infection among drug addicts in the developed world."

Turvey, who still runs the Vancouver needle exchange, admits the exchange
had, and still has, its shortcomings. "Take it from me, when we opened the
needle exchange, it was marketed as supposedly stemming the tide of HIV and
AIDS," Turvey told me. "Now years later we look back and think, 'Boy, were
we ever naive.' "

Of course, jovial COPE candidate Larry Campbell is betting the headlong
drive for safe-injection sites will propel him into the mayor's seat Nov. 16.

But Turvey cautions this could be a big mistake. He says European cities
have adopted such sites only as a last resort: "Here we are kind of doing
it ass backwards. We're trying to put the harm-reduction injection site first."

Moreover, Vancouver has only a tiny fraction of the police drug officers
employed by cities like Amsterdam and Frankfurt: "It's like comparing
apples and bananas."

Turvey thinks safe-injection sites could actually boost the drug industry
in the Downtown Eastside, now more violent than ever.

What addicts need, he says, is a network of programs -- including those
which are abstinence-based: "There's a whole community out there to be
reclaimed."

Did he say abstinence? Yes, that's how Turvey kicked his heroin habit 33
years ago, aged 25. Turvey has a Grade 6 education. But he makes a whole
lot more sense to me than the Owens of this world.