LET ME REPEAT: WE ALL MUST SAY NO TO DRUGS

Addicts can benefit at the expense of hard-working taxpayers

Boy, are we confused about our approach to drugs in this province.

Next Tuesday, on World Health Day, new B.C. regulations come into
force that will bar folks from smoking in cars when children are present.

It's part of a nationwide campaign to clamp down on tobacco, a
technically legal drug now increasingly being outlawed by various
levels of government with a series of bans on indoor and outdoor smoking.

The campaign seems to be working. Literally millions fewer Canadians
are smokers. And the latest health stats show tobacco use in Canada
shrunk from 25 per cent of the population aged 15 or over in 1999 to
18 per cent in the first half of last year. B.C.'s smoking rate was
just 15 per cent.

The bad news is that, despite tobacco remaining a lawful, regulated
product, sales of cheap, contraband cigarettes by organized-crime
groups are reported to be booming, especially in Quebec and Ontario.
Which goes to show drug legalization may not be the miracle cure it's
being cracked up to be.

Indeed, I suggested recently the real answer to B.C.'s chronic drug
problem, and related street violence, lay with more people saying no
to drugs and fewer taking them.

To some, however, this was an outrageous suggestion, in clear
violation of their right to poison themselves as they damn well please.

However, I did get some reader support -- including from Adam
Cassidy, a Downtown Eastside rock musician and delivery driver, who'd
clearly had his fill of the drug scene. "I have seen many people over
the years who both sold and took drugs almost indiscriminately, with
little fear of the law, only to eventually completely unravel and die
of overdoses," he told me.

Cassidy, 43, once loved a woman who became a hopeless crackhead.
"Legal or no, crack utterly destroys people within 12 months," he said.

It was a shame, he added, that so much public money went to housing
inconsiderate addicts and so little helping hard-working taxpayers
find a place to live: "The powers-that-be are essentially telling
them that, in order to get a leg up, they have to start smoking crack
or become a junkie and then apply for the methadone program." This
obviously makes for a lively neighbourhood. And early one morning in
January, Cassidy was so upset by the commotion in the laneway beside
his rented studio, he got out of bed and confronted a man whose two
buddies were whaling on some unfortunate fellow. "You telling me how
to run my business," the man asked, pulling out a gun.

It's unclear what business the gunman was referring to. But my view
remains that our society should do far less to disrupt the sleep of
workers like Cassidy and far more to give sleepless nights to alley
enforcers, crack dealers . . . or dealers in contraband cigarettes.

The best way to do that is for us all, collectively and individually,
to simply start kicking the drug habit -- or at least stop enabling it.