STUDENT NURSES TACKLE ADDICTION STEREOTYPES

Some Addicts Get More Respect Than Others.

No one blinks at the coffee drinker who can't function without his
morning of cup of java, but there's little patience for the junkie in
the throes of cold turkey.

Even health care professionals look down on addicts, often leaving
them feeling trapped in a hopeless cycle of addiction.

"If someone had a sex or alcohol addiction, we don't throw them in
jail," said Dawn Doiron, a fourth-year nursing student at Malaspina
University-College.

She's one of a dozen nursing students involved in Faces of Addiction,
which hopes to raise community awareness of addiction issues, while
improving access to services for addicts.

"A person has to chose to use drugs or not use them, but no one
chooses to be addicted. Addicts are not just low-lifes or prostitutes
- - it could be someone living in the north end," said Doiron.

A goal of the Faces of Addiction project is to tear down some of the
stereotypes surrounding drug addiction, and encourage harm-reduction
in favour of the "war on drugs" approach.

"In our profession we're trying to raise awareness about the language
around addiction," says Sharon Gerhart, another member.

"One nursing student came in and says, who's my client, and she finds
out it's an addict, and there's a stigma around that. We're always
stigmatizing the person.

"So our awareness is about how to change how we view a person with an
addiction."

Faces of Addiction was formed in 2005. When this year's crop of
nursing students took it over its members wanted to start a
supervised injection site in Nanaimo, but the students soon realized
this community isn't ready for that.

"People say you're condoning it," Doiron said. "We say no, they're
going to do it anyways, so if you can stop the spread of hepatitis and HIV ..."

"It's so hard for people to get their head around that concept. It's,
they're bad people, they're sinners."

Members plan to raise some of those issues today with the screening
of the documentary, The Fix: the Story of an Addicted City filmed in
2002 in East Vancouver. It shows at MalU Building 180, room 134, at 2:30 p.m.

A panel will lead discussion afterward, and organizers hope the film
sparks some lively debate.

"Some of the students coming down are in criminology, and it will be
interesting to see how it unfolds, just to see some of the biases,"
Doiron said.

"It's going to be interesting."