BETTER APPROACH NEEDED

Drug problems come with no easy solutions. Like many communities
across the country, Salmon Arm has a share of citizens who are plagued
by drug addictions. While the numbers aren't easy to compile, the
devastating effects are. They hit individuals and families at all
levels: socially, economically, physically, emotionally.

For more than a year, we have heard complaints about what appears to
be drug activity in Rotary Gardens. People coming and going at all
hours, many visitors just stopping long enough to go inside one of the
units and come out again.

This is not to say that the whole complex has problems - the problem
behaviours are reportedly isolated, with many people having lived
happily there for years.

What is most disturbing is the impression that several complainants
have been left with -- that nothing is being done about the problem.

Although the RCMP report that officers are working on it, they also
say that it is one of many such problems, and resources are limited.
Charges require hard evidence, and evidence is hard to come by.

That is so, but the community deserves better.

We know that police officers have difficult jobs and take risks daily.
We also know that in Salmon Arm, like many communities, officers are
transferred in and out regularly, so it can take time for them to get
to know the community.

That's where the eyes and ears of the community become so important.
If neighbours say, for more than a year, that what appears to be drug
activity is occurring at a particular location, surely they deserve,
at the very least, to be left with the feeling that their concerns
have been fully investigated and that they are part of the solution --
not that nothing's being done.

Whether that means holding a community meeting, setting up a
neighbourhood/police committee, telling city council and the community
that the police, with their current resources, can't solve these
problems and more community brain-storming is needed -- whatever the
answer might be, we need a new approach.

We don't need finger-pointing and blaming, but we do need
solutions.

The drug problem is too debilitating to allow pockets of suspected
activity to carry on indefinitely.