SET UP FREE DRUG CLINICS IN CITY

Re: City police crave a fix for addicts (Sept. 1). Until the
government starts offering real help, one step towards a better life
would be free drug clinics.

Apply for a Section 56 exemption from Health Canada, and immediately
open a clinic in every neighbourhood with a drug problem.

Hire a pharmaceutical company to provide thousands of doses of
cocaine, heroin, meth, and their substitute drugs. When made by
professional labs, this stuff is clean, dose-regulated, and about as
cheap as aspirin.

Hire nurses to dispense the drugs and offer counselling. Needles,
pipes, or drugs will never leave the premises.

Inform all the addicts that they now have a safe alternative to
street drugs, and a sure fix.

Legalize and regulate marijuana, and use the $3 billion in annual tax
revenue to pay for the program.

The addicts will have a safe alternative to creepy, predatory street
dealers. They will be using clean medications, will be off the needle
and pipe and onto oral doses, then onto recovery. They won't have to
panhandle, rob, prostitute, deal, and mug people giving them more
time to work on sobriety, health, hygiene, employment, and
re-integration into society.

Dealers will have no customers, and the crack houses will go out of business!

This plan doesn't address the badly needed (and wildly expensive)
issues of rehab beds and ongoing out-patient services and support.

But this plan would dramatically reduce crime, disease, cost, danger,
and death and do so at a fraction of currently projected costs.

RUSSELL BARTH

Federally licensed medical marijuana user Patients Against Ignorance
and Discrimination on Cannabis (PAIDOC)