NORTHERN HEALTH FOLLIES

You know that things aren't quite right when you can't get a doctor
to make a house call, but if you want to host a crack party, Northern
Health (NH) is happy to send the needle exchange van (crack wagon)
over to your house.

Not only will the wagon park outside your house until at least 3
a.m., they'll happily supply you with crack pipes, needles, condoms
for sex or just tying off when you shoot up.

You will have to leave the comforts of your home, however, and walk
out to the van, since, according to NH, it's too dangerous for their
staff to leave the vehicle.

The "crack wagon" operates five nights a week from Wednesday to
Sunday and may soon be coming to a neighborhood near you.

If the RCMP wants to find the crack dens in P.G., they should just
follow the van.

The sad part is this "harm reduction" program is coming from many of
the same folks, who, back in the '60s, were advising governments to
"deinstitutionalize mental health by closing psychiatric hospitals,
replacing them with community care and outpatient treatment."

According to a study done by Charity Intelligence Canada, between
1960 and 1976, 27,630 beds for mental illness were eliminated,
reducing available beds by 57 per cent.

The result has been 157,000 homeless in Canada, with a cost to the
taxpayer of $1.25 billion in criminal justice, social services,
emergency shelter costs and emergency health care for Canada's homeless.

Now these same "experts" want us to believe that aiding and abetting
addicts and drug dealers in breaking the law is a sensible approach
to addition. The new buzz word is "harm reduction".

The result of these efforts has left Prince George with the second
highest rate of HIV infection in B.C., and one of the highest in
Canada, along with a crime rate 89.1 per cent higher than the rest of
B.C. in areas like prostitution and drug offences.

The so-called needle exchange on 3rd Avenue is anything but, as
evidence by the needles and cartridges littering the back alleys downtown.

Now we have medical professionals like Dr. Evan Wood of the BC Centre
for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (go figure), calling for the creation of
"inhalation rooms" where addicts can go to smoke crack unmolested by
police.

Marshall Smith, the executive director of Baldy Hughes Long Term
Addiction Treatment Centre, remarked recently that "the hardest part
about treating addicts is removing their sense of entitlement that
society owes them something".

It is easy to see why this attitude exists when you see things like
the "crack wagon" parked across the street.

It is time the board and CEO of Northern Health started to act like
responsible corporate citizens and not only discontinued the van but
closed the needle exchange.

All the studies and good intentions of cleaning up our downtown or
attracting business and residents to our city will be for naught if
they fail to do otherwise.

If they fail to act, the city, our elected politicians and the police
should step in and do the job we elected and hired them to do.