TIME TO QUIT ENABLING DRUNKS AND JUNKIES

In a society that stigmatizes harmless nicotine addicts as though
they were pederasts lurking near a playground, it's fascinating how
much sympathy your basic scumbag junkie or loser street alkie manages
to inspire.

Even the Sun's ace municipal affairs reporter Mike Platt -- an
otherwise reasonable and intelligent man -- referred in a column to
agencies such as the Drop-In Centre as working to "help the helpless."

Street drunks and junkies aren't helpless. They're moral weaklings
who choose helplessness.

The issue of addicts bothering decent people is back in the news
because the Calgary Downtown Association -- bless their hearts -- has
launched a billboard campaign to urge people to quit giving money to
downtown beggars.

The billboard features a bum shooting up with a syringe full of small change.

This is because the estimated 200,000 Calgarians who misguidedly give
money to bums are subsidizing their deadly drug and alcohol habits
and, not incidentally, encouraging them to continue to pollute our
downtown with their odiferous presence.

Personally, I have a lot of sympathy for drunks.

I'm of Scots and Irish descent and, along with a culinary tradition
that makes starvation seem like a viable life choice and a feigned
appreciation for the bagpipe, we have a terrible thirst.

There are numerous drunkards hanging from branches of my family tree
like bunches of rotten fruit -- although they all held jobs, never
missed a shift and paid lots of taxes.

However, they threw up a lot, were considered emotionally unavailable
by children and spouses, and weren't real productive first thing in
the morning.

Plus they got in a lot of bar fights.

I have watched alcohol dependency destroy the lives of relatives I loved.

Interestingly, not one of them wound up begging for spare change.

Like them, I am genetically predisposed to be a wastrel.

Personally, I'd love to start every morning with a stiff shot of Jack
Daniels, followed by a six-pack of Sleeman's and a great big bong
packed with B.C. bud.

And when I was done that, I'd drink the bong water just to help me
cruise through to my noon nap.

But transitory happiness is not the primary goal in my life so I do
not crack open a bottle of Jack at 9 a.m. I wait until after work,
like all decent folk, and then limit my consumption. Except, of
course, when my friend Paul throws a degenerate beer bash and I wind
up sleeping beneath a barbecue tarp on his deck. And then I shake off
the world-class hangover and go to work.

You can have family and work and community and self-respect or you
can have constant chemically induced stupor.

One argument against drying up the cash supply for criminal addicts
and alkies is that if we quit tossing them quarters, then they'll
just start hitting decent folk in the head from behind with a sock
full of rocks and lifting their wallets.

That's like arguing that banning child pornography will deny
pedophiles the fantasy outlet they require and instead they'll start
snatching kids off playgrounds.

It is morally bankrupt. And it does nothing to alleviate the problem.

The answer is not to make life easier for those addicted to drugs and alcohol.

The answer is not to feed, clothe and shelter them.

The answer is not to drop a toonie into a grubby, outstretched hand.

Those things are surrender in the face of a blight upon our city.

There is no kindness in it. It's like loading a pistol as a favour
for a suicidal friend, and what is an extreme alcohol or drug
addiction but a suicide in slow motion?

When a wife makes excuses about a husband's drunkenness or drug
addiction, she is called an enabler -- someone who facilitates the
continued addiction.

Those in the professional compassion industry are merely enablers writ large.

And I wonder if they ever pause to reflect that the increase of
drunks and junkies on our streets may be directly related to the
increasing scope of the services they provide to such people.