DA VINCI SHOW JOINS DRUG DEBATE

The television drama spotlights Vancouver's drug problem, and raises
questions about the war on drugs

"Have you been asleep for the past 30 years of the drug war, Zack?
It's not working -- but don't take my word for it. Ask just about
everybody else working in law enforcement, they'll agree."

The lines quoted above are from the television show Da Vinci's
Inquest, but you'll hear similar comments all over Vancouver these
days as the city debates what to do about its worsening drug scene.

It's happening at private meetings, lunch-time conversations, and,
this month in particular, at public forums where the city of
Vancouver is asking the public for its response to a proposed new
drug strategy.

So, while Larry Campbell, a real-life former chief coroner in
Vancouver, was making the case at one public forum this week for a
saner drug policy, his fictional counterpart, Domenic Da Vinci, who
is heavily based on Campbell's life, had already made a much more
dramatic case in the TV series the week before.

"You think these things will just go away because you choose not to
see? It's here, Zack, and it's not going away," Da Vinci argues to
the hardline cop he's working alongside as he investigates a death in
a downtown alley.

Da Vinci works in Vancouver and especially in the heart of the
drug-plagued Downtown Eastside, as did Campbell.

The other connection between the two is that Campbell is a consultant
to the show and occasionally co-writes scripts -- and he's the first
to admit that Da Vinci's words and attitudes are close to his own.

So in this fictional episode, Da Vinci keeps arguing with his cop
colleague Zack about why safe-injection sites for drug users are
needed and would be a vast improvement over the illegal ones
operating all over the city: "There you go, Zack, right in there's
what we've got for a safe injection site," he says, pointing to a
rundown, boarded-up building in the Downtown Eastside alley that runs
down from Victory Square. "No danger to the public and cheap as hell
to maintain. Happy now?"

When Zack grumbles, "That's all they deserve," Da Vinci retorts:
"Lord, forgive him, he's been in a coma."

Then, in a startling capper to the episode, Da Vinci goes off and
buys a flap of heroin at Victory Square for a drug user (a
middle-class doctor's son, not coincidentally) to get him to come out
of a shooting gallery for police questioning, rather than going along
with Zack's strategy of a a full emergency response, with guns
blazing, to force him out.

The episode goes a bit over the top, says Campbell. ("I was frankly a
little queasy at the idea of a detective and a coroner going out to
buy drugs. I wouldn't do that and I don't know many who would.")

But his essential point is there in the over-all story. And the
lesson, in case anyone missed it, is that the old ways aren't
working: Trying to bomb the drug crisis away isn't going to work, nor
is treating addicts as though they're expendable and should just be
left to die if they can't get it together to clean themselves up.

Although the show's characters are frequently involved in murders and
deaths that are eerily reminiscent of real-life B.C. cases, this is
the first time the show has become so directly involved in a
public-policy debate.

And it won't be the last, says the show's creator and executive
producer, Chris Haddock.

"There will be more like this," says Haddock, who grew up in
Vancouver, went to Woodward's as a kid, and currently has his offices
in the Dominion Building at the edge of the Downtown Eastside.

The show, the 37th episode since Da Vinci's Inquest started three
years ago, generated more response than any other he's made, Haddock
said.

Some wrote or called just to express admiration for the screenplay,
which was co-written by Haddock and Alan DiFiore, or the difficult
technical challenge he overcame -- the episode was shot with very few
cuts and comes across even more than other episodes as
near-documentary rather than fictional.

But others praised the show for tackling a difficult issue.

One addict even wrote in to thank Haddock and the others for
portraying drug users so sensitively.

"I am an addict and have been for six years," Matthew from Ontario
wrote in. "I am 24 going on 60. No one knows what it's like until
they are there. Your show hit it straight on. I am glad there are
sympathetic people in the world."

That kind of message isn't the first the show has received. Da
Vinci's Inquest enjoys a cult following among some current and former
drug users in Vancouver who have access to a TV, says someone who
works with them, Warren O'Briain at AIDS Vancouver.

"They like the way they're shown as real people, not cookie-cutter
images of druggies."

Da Vinci's Inquest isn't the only place where the entertainment
business has entered the fray over drug policy, of course.

The recently released Hollywood blockbuster Traffic also portrays the
war on drugs as a deluded and failing attempt to grapple with a
complex problem that has penetrated every facet of North American
society.

Like the recent Da Vinci episode, the movie also uses a middle-class
kid as the vehicle to make the point that the war on drugs is not
just a war on perceived lower-class losers, but on the children of
"regular" families.

And like Da Vinci, the movie advocates understanding and support for
drug users.

Campbell and Haddock believe society is inevitably moving in that
direction, in spite of the vehement opposition of some who believe
that "harm reduction" efforts like needle exchanges or safe-injection
sites just give drug users social permission to keep taking drugs.

"That opposition comes from people who are misinformed and who are
philosophically opposed," says Campbell. "But there is room for most
of us to meet in the middle."

Haddock says that, even though he has his own beliefs, he's not
trying to hit people over the head with them.

"My task is to engage the audience every week by putting arguments
and characters in different positions."

So, even though Da Vinci argues that the war on drugs is useless,
Zack gets to make his case that the war on drugs could be won if
agencies would really go to war with enough money and troops.

Haddock said the script caused "a huge debate around the catering
truck" -- a sign to him that he's succeeded in making people think.

Ultimately, says Haddock, who's lost a few friends to drugs over the
years, he doesn't advocate for one particular solution because he
doesn't believe there is one.

"One of the things I've learned is that there is no fix. There are
strategies that are worth trying."