GUITARD'S LIFE LOST TO DRUGS

Here's a legacy for Jonathan Guitard. He could be the man who ends the
pointless debate about whether people with addictions are responsible
for their own choices. Guitard died just before Christmas. A security
guard found the 28-year-old man unresponsive on a downtown sidewalk.
He called police and walked on. They delayed looking for him and
didn't try too hard to find him.

The same security guard passed by again and called an ambulance, but
Guitard died in hospital a few hours later. Police acknowledge his
life could have been saved.

Guitard's death barely caused a ripple. But this week, Rev. Al Tysick
described him as someone who could have "got out." Guitard was
addicted to cocaine.

To get the money for drugs, he stole. Police charged him 15 times and
dealt with him 50 times in two years. He cut parking meters off their
posts and broke into cars, all for drug money.

Maybe that is all his fault for deciding to try cocaine for the first
time. But so what? The results are still the same for Guitard, his
family, the crime victims, the police, the nurses and doctors.

Guitard wanted out of the life sometimes, Tysick says. But when he
worked up the courage to try to deal with his addictions, there was
never a detox place for him. By the time one had been found, he was
lost to the drugs again. People with addictions aren't good at waiting.

The Vancouver Island Health Authority has limited detox spaces and
accepts cocaine or meth addicts only in extraordinary circumstances.
They are expected to give up drugs while living on the street, in a
shelter or drug house.

So did Guitard deserve to die? Most of us would say no. Burdensome as
it might be, we are our brothers' keepers.

But surely everyone can see it makes no sense to send a prolific
criminal back on to the street to keep on breaking into our cars.

Jonathan Guitard might have made it. He might not have. But we didn't
care enough about him, or our community, to find out.