FED-UP MERCHANTS TELL CITY TO ARREST JUNKIES THE PROVINCE

Merchants in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside yesterday called on city
officials to dump social programs for drug users and to start arresting
addicts instead.

The demands came from the Community Alliance, a new coalition of 12 groups
representing owners of businesses and property in Gastown and Chinatown.

A news conference held by the Alliance was interrupted when three community
activists loudly denounced the business group.

Security guards and Vancouver police barred reporters from the Chinese
Benevolent Association's office on Pender Street until more police arrived
and arrested the protesters.

Muggs Sigurgeirson, Jeff Summers and Tom Laviolette, all board members at
the Carnegie Centre at Main and Hastings, were later released.

Alliance spokesman Grant Longhurst and chairman Bryce Rositch said
governments have wasted 10 years and hundreds of millions of dollars on
social programs and "harm-reduction" schemes, with no positive results.

"It's time to say this doesn't work," said Longhurst.

"The public needs to know that not everyone in the downtown neighbourhoods
is advocating on behalf of drug users."

Mayor Philip Owen said he shares the merchants' frustration, but added:
"We're not totally on-side with their strategy."

Instead, Owen promised a three-month moratorium on new services,
specifically the resource centre.

He was referring to a planned centre in the 500-block Powell Street, where
addicts could shower and do laundry.

The Alliance vehemently opposes the centre, which Longhurst called "an
extension of a shooting gallery."

Outside the meeting, resident Carol Romanow, a former drug user, was
"disgusted" with the organization's hostility to health care and housing
for drug users.

"Most of these [addicts] are sick. A hot shower and a cup of coffee --
what's wrong with that?"

Rositch called on police to enforce drug laws "equally" by arresting
addicts instead of merely confiscating their drugs.