DRUG POLICY TO BE DEBATED AT SYMPOSIUM

Steve McDougall remembers well having to be literally "scraped off
the floor of a divy little apartment on Wark Street" before he could
get on the road to recovery from heroin addiction.

He considers himself lucky to have a caring family to help him stay
on the road to recovery and place him in a long-term detox facility,
but said many people don't have that luxury. The system in many
cases, is failing them, he said.

"The state of treatment - even the state of availability of detox -
are pretty close to criminal," he said. "The fact that someone who
wants to get clean has to wait three weeks to get a bed - so much
can happen in three weeks."

McDougall is a member of a new community coalition known as Voices
of Substance. He'll be among the panelists taking part in a day-long
symposium this Friday entitled The Costs of Doing Nothing:
Looking Beyond our Current Approaches to Substance Use.

Guest speakers from the health-care, police, business and sex-trade
sectors will trade viewpoints with a selection of panelists from
equally varied groups to get a sense of the current state of
treatment and what direction could be taken to improve the situation.

Standing still is not an option when it comes to helping substance
abusers in Greater Victoria get healthy, McDougall said.

"The whole thing about harm reduction is that you can't save a dead
addict. You can't offer them recovery," he said.

McDougall said from his perspective, having healthy choices
available for addicted individuals is the key to healing. A problem
in past has been a "misdirection of resources," with not enough
emphasis on working with addicted individuals to find out what they need.

"So much money would be saved by putting people through treatment
rather than putting them in jail," he said. "I don't think I would
have had a chance at recovery had I not been in a treatment place
that was longer than 28 days."

Voices of Substance member Connie Carter, a University of Victoria
doctoral candidate and former administrator for addictions research,
said the goal of the seminar is to spark dialogue.

"We can't develop social policy without input from the people who
will be affected by that social policy," she said. "I'm hoping we
can all come together and see each other's perspectives in a new
light. Education can change people."

The symposium runs from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Ambrosia Catering
and Events Centre, 638 Fisgard St. For more information, call
361-050 or go to http://www.voicesofsubstance.ca.