DRUGS ARE CANCER IN THE HEART OF THE CITY

Law-abiding residents have made it clear that they're tired of drugs being
sold openly in our streets. But they and the police get little help from
glacially slow immigration bureaucrats.

How badly do Vancouverites want to reclaim their streets?

When all the studies, the neighbourhood outcries and the agonized meetings
of the authorities are over, that is the question.

The answer can't be long avoided -- unless it's answered by default, and
law-abiding citizens and lawful businesses slowly abandon the Downtown
Eastside's cocaine corridor and other venues of open sales of drugs of all
kinds in the Greater Vancouver area.

This week police in Burnaby, New Westminster and Vancouver targeted more
than 70 drug dealers in a coordinated drive called Operation Scoop. The
significant thing is what was left unscooped. Police predicted that
notwithstanding the arrests it would instantly be business as usual. They
were right.

The fact that the overwhelming number of the dealers are Hondurans -- who
in the last year have taken over much of the turf from Salvadorans and
Guatemalans -- is only incidental to the larger issue of the glacial
slowness bordering on paralysis of the immigration and refugee
bureaucracies to expeditiously get rid of the thoroughly bad apples from
abroad (our domestic ones foul enough barrels).

And none are more vocal about doing so than the law-abiding members of
immigrant communities. As shown by the 11,000-name petition of the Canadian
Grassroots Community Association, these citizens are in the forefront of
the demand for action.

The Downtown Eastside, and principally a few blocks on Hastings Street, is
the cancerous heart of the Lower Mainland drug trade. Many residents of
this area of almost 6,000 single-occupancy rooms are simply the
hard-working poor or the unfortunate old, plus newcomers on the wave of
"gentrification." But all have a stake in the area.

And so does the well-organized drug trade -- with its "support services" of
prostitution, bars, thefts, burglaries and some well-known pawnshops that
serve as the financial institutions for the stolen goods that pay for drugs.

This gaping wound absorbs hugely disproportionate social and police
services. The human cost is incalculable. The damage to the city's image
and self-respect -- tourists are stunned when they take the "wrong" turn
into this social cesspool -- is also beyond measure.

The Downtown Eastside shouldn't lack for political clout. Veteran activist
and Member of Parliament Libby Davies, provincial Municipal Affairs
Minister Jenny Kwan, Premier Glen Clark, Finance Minister Joy MacPhail and
Attorney-General Ujjal Dosanjh represent constituents in or abutting the
area.

We began with the question of how badly Vancouverites want to reclaim their
streets. But that only invites a larger question. How much do the
authorities -- chiefly in Victoria and in Ottawa -- care?