KENTON'S ACTIONS KEY TO THE DRUG PROBLEM

We Need To Stand Up To Ourselves And Just Say 'No More'

What an inspiring story in Monday's Province by reporter Kent
Spencer. You know -- the one on Abbotsford student Kenton O'Donnell
speaking out about having to live in a bizarre, Big-Brother-style,
video-surveillance bubble down the street from the Bacon brothers . .
. a.k.a. the prime beef of B.C. gang-shooting targets.

"How would you like to walk a day in my shoes?" the plucky 11-year-old asks.

How indeed? Well, that triggers a whole bunch of questions. But the
main one is: Are we content to live in communities under constant
watch by police and under endless siege by heavily armed
gang-bangers? And if not, what are we going to do about it?

Civil libertarians say the solution is to legalize drugs. In fact,
lawyer Kirk Tousaw, of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association's
drug-policy committee, will be arguing that position tonight at 7:30
p.m. in the Vancouver Public Library, during a debate put on by
Langara College.

There's another way, though, and that is for Lower Mainland
residents, or as many of them as possible, to just stop taking
illegal drugs . . . to say sayonara to their scuzzy local supplier,
to flush their own system and get a life.

Some will say that requires the self-discipline of a Buddhist monk.
But if we can say no to bullying, no to drunk-driving, no to tobacco
and even no to climate change, why can't we say no to drugs?

Don't listen to the usual pundits. They keep prattling on about
George W. Bush and the war on drugs and how it's been a colossal
failure. But what war exactly are they talking about? As former
addict Barry Joneson points out, if you want to see what the drug war
in Vancouver is really like, head on down to the Downtown Eastside
combat zone. It's total surrender.

"I just walked down Hastings Street the other day and I watched a
girl there, a skinny little girl, shooting drugs with blood running
down her arm, and a police officer walking by," Joneson told me. "He
looked at her for two seconds and he didn't even miss a beat with his
feet, and he just kept walking. And I thought that's perfect, that's
legalization."

Joneson, by the way, is the speaker who'll be taking on Tousaw in
tonight's debate. And he agrees with me that what we need is not so
much a war on drugs as a major citizens' campaign against them,
backed by celebs, civic leaders and anybody else fed up with our
region becoming a shooting gallery.

What we need is a relentless, public-information drive to make
drug-taking as uncool and unacceptable as, well, bad breath and
carbon overload.

We need to use Economics 101 to drive the dealers out of business by
drastically reducing the demand for their services. If no one's
buying drugs, no one's selling them.

We need to walk in Kenton's shoes . . . and say "no more."

It's all up to us.