IT'S TOUGH TO WORK UP MUCH SYMPATHY FOR DRUG ADDICTS

Heroin addicts are dropping on the streets of Vancouver and I'm supposed to
care.

Those who would pry more money out of Ottawa for drug programs want me to
care enough to lobby for: more and better treatment; consideration of drug
issues as a health matter, not a crime; and a higher focus on the dreadful
toll that high-grade heroin is taking on the mean streets of Canada's
lotusland.

In that case, give me a reason to give a damn. Because right now, I don't.

Until the people on the street dealing with wasted lives can find the
method of making me care, the death toll will keep rising.

Vancouver is ground zero of Canada's death-by-drugs problem: 116 deaths in
the first six months; 201 in all of B.C.

Every year across the country, about 1,000 deaths are directly attributed
to drugs, mostly overdoses.

Statistics don't tell the story of somebody's daughter or son; someone's
husband, wife or children. They just spit out numbers: 55 per cent of young
people between 12 to 17 in Alberta have used alcohol; 30 per cent used
tobacco; 16 per cent have smoked pot and five per cent have tried other
street drugs. Adults differ only in that they drink more and use fewer
drugs. Alberta's numbers are lower than the rest of the country, but that
may, in part, be a matter of availability and distance from a port or large
U.S. centre.

Canada wavers in its attitude toward drug use somewhere between the
hard-line criminalization of the United States, where there are a
half-million heroin addicts and probably more than double that addicted to
some other drug; and Europe, particularly the Netherlands, where a tough
line is taken on trafficking and selling, but the authorities look the
other way at personal use.

Following the consciousness-raising at a United Nations-sponsored drug
summit last month, the hue and cry to "do something" about drugs is in full
throat. Hard-liners would have tougher penalties and zero-tolerance. That
has filled American prisons with addicts and pushers and created its own
kind of monster morality play, where increasing resources go to punishment
rather than providing solutions, and a $1-billion television ad campaign
tries to change attitudes through fear and intimidation.

The argument on the other side is that drug addiction is being fought on
all the wrong fronts, that it is as much a disease as alcoholism and it
should be treated as such, with the focus on rehabilitation.

In the middle are taxpayers who would like a reason that millions of their
dollars should be spent to save the wilfully addicted. Unlike starving
children in Sudan, who are victims of other's wilfulness and pride and are
caught between warring factions and uncaring adults, it is tough to work up
much sympathy for drug addicts.

Should money be wasted trying to drag those determined to kill themselves
back from the brink of oblivion? Or should the money be put to preventing
the addiction that takes the willing and weak and the ready-to-be-wasted
down that road in the first place?

Maybe the real answer is the latter, and all the apologists who accuse
so-called ordinary Canadians of not caring about the death rate among the
drug-addicted in Vancouver merely have the focus wrong.

Canadians care deeply when their own children or families are caught up in
a maelstrom of addiction. But long-suffering parents and disgusted friends
and relatives eventually give up, after exhausting community resources and
themselves.

At the point where junkies will do anything for a fix, not many of us can
work up emotions other than pity and disgust. That these are people, that
these are members of someone's family is a given. That I should care
deeply, beyond the philosophical and moral, is another matter entirely.

If we really cared, we'd spend as much time lobbying for treatment centres
and education programs as we spend worrying about the fools who put their
money into VLTs.

What I am willing to do is work toward taking kids off the streets and for
programs that treat drug addiction as a disease.

I am willing to pay for education programs aimed at young people to teach
them the pitfalls of drugs -- whether Ritalin, Prozac, heroin or Glenfiddich.

But the point of tragedy is not when an addict chooses to inject pure-grade
heroin, but when the first needle slips into a vein. That, I'm willing to
help pay to prevent.

Catherine Ford can be reached by e-mail at fordc@theherald.southam.ca

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski