VANCOUVER'S OTHER FACE IS NOT PRETTY

10 Tourists Won't Like City's Drug Problems And Property Crime

VANCOUVER is nearing the end of a star-crossed odyssey.

It began with the brilliance of Expo 86 and continued at a
breathtaking pace during 20 years of inspired and assertive downtown
redevelopment. As each decision was taken and followed by
development, preservation or restoration, the city centre became more
desirable as a place to live, to enjoy the arts, to do business and
be entertained. The quality of life in our downtown core became so
highly regarded by planners in other cities that it is referred to as
the Vancouver model.

Yet all of this is being offset by abandonment of Skid Road to a
growing number of omnipotent drug addicts and dealers attracted by
the chaos of its streets and Vancouver's de facto decriminalization
of illicit drugs. And from that base camp these undesirables foray
into the rest of the downtown core and prey upon decent people who
live and work or visit there.

No matter how you characterize the attributes of high-rise living on
the shores of False Creek, Coal Harbour and the West End, it all
comes to naught without protection against violence and property crime.

Rigorous enforcement of the law is no longer a reality in downtown Vancouver.

In my opinion, our city's magnificent journey will come to a jarring
halt under intense international scrutiny leading up to and during
the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Citizens of Canada's la-la land will be revealed for what we are:
world-class hypocrites, venerating drug-free athletes as role models
for youth, while giving tacit approval to and tolerating Vancouver's
experiment in solving drug use by enabling it to continue.

If you have been sitting on the fence while Vancouver mayors Philip
Owen, Gordon Campbell and Sam Sullivan successfully championed a
supervised shooting gallery, a dramatic increase in methadone
maintenance and an experiment in the handing out of free heroin, then
you should wear the badge of complicity because - you guessed it -
the druggies of Skid Road are now an outdoor collection of laboratory
specimens: a purposeful first step in partnership with Vancouver
Coastal Health Authority in its quest to end criminalization of
illicit drugs through the implementation of a bureaucratic regulatory
scheme that will engage in the production, distribution and
controlled use of such dangerous drugs. Of necessity this inane
scheme will engender a self-serving and profitable addict-management industry.

So step aside, all you moralists and ethicists of the 20th century,
health professionals of the 21st century know what you don't know:
addiction is either an involuntary physical illness, a mental
illness, or, as likened by Sullivan, a disability. Out with jail, in
with therapy.

In this new age, addicts will not be stigmatized as junkies,
potheads, crackheads or methheads who have an obsession with cranking
up - because - under regulation as opposed to prohibition, everyone
will have an unfettered right to escape the reality of life and the
burden of citizenship through psychoactive drug abuse. Through a
process of pseudo-intellectualization, resulting addiction will be
deemed an inadvertent disease to be healed with soothing therapy,
without condemnation and, at all costs, without the abrupt
intervention of detoxification and abstinence.

As Victoria's Dr. Tana Dineen put it, in her essay Modern Ritual
Replaces 'Wrong' with 'Illness,' - published in the Vancouver Sun on
April 17, 2004: "Having substituted 'health and illness' for 'right
and wrong,' we have developed a common therapeutic language that
provides the sole route to caring and forgiveness. Offenders confess
their psychological problems and we rationalize their actions in
terms of personal woes. . . ."

The crisis of drug activities and aggressive panhandling in Vancouver
is the product of a downward spiral of law and order, particularly on
Skid Road.

It has been exacerbated by a chronically under-strength police force,
too much plea-bargaining by provincial and federal Crown counsel, and
a judiciary too often imposing conditional sentences and modest jail
sentences that fit well within the derisive term "revolving door justice."

Nevertheless it is former mayors Owen and Campbell and incumbent
Mayor Sullivan who ought to accept responsibility for the
deterioration of public safety in Vancouver during their respective
periods in office.

Will they? Absolutely not - because they have tied themselves to the
mast of their leaky ship SS Injection Site as they participate in a
frenzied media campaign to keep it afloat.

If the federal government swallows their dubious claims that
Vancouver's supervised injection site is a success, and permits it to
continue operating beyond Sept. 12, it will signal that they too, are
morally bankrupt.