WAR AGAINST OPEN DRUG USE CAPTURES 25

Twenty-five people have been charged with using drugs in the city
since police began its crackdown last month to curb the illegal open
air drug market, says a Vancouver police sergeant.

Sgt. Joanne Boyle of the City Wide Enforcement Team said the majority
of arrests since Feb.17 occurred in the Downtown Eastside. Fifteen of
those were made in Parks, including Andy Livingstone park near GM
Place and Victoria Park off Commercial Drive.

All but two of the 25 people were allegedly using crack cocaine. The
other two were allegedly injecting heroin, said Boyle, noting "there
are more people in the Downtown Eastside smoking crack than using
heroin, for sure."

None has gone to trial or been sentenced.

All 25, however, will have a chance to attend the city's drug court,
which includes treatment. The federal Crown prosecutor will review
each case before a decision is made, Boyle said.

"Unless there's something extenuating with each of these, that will
be their first option," she added. "Then it's up to them whether they
want to take that route or not."

The program, which is run out of an undisclosed downtown building,
includes counselling, random urine tests, methadone therapy, curfews,
and weekly reports to the court.

As the Courier learned in researching a story on the drug court, all
participants in the program are longtime addicts, most of whom
started using in their teens.

Many were infected with Hepatitis C and HIV and have criminal
histories tied to small-time drug dealing and petty theft. Some had
up to 80 criminal convictions and others worked in the sex trade.

A person graduates when they are clean of cocaine, heroin or crystal
methamphetamine for the last three months of what is usually a year
to an 18-month treatment program.

The person must also have stable housing and either be working or
attending a job training program to graduate. When the Courier last
published a story in December 2004 about drug court, 36 people had
graduated from the program.

"In a way, it's an added benefit to us that we know these people are
being offered treatment after being arrested," Boyle said of the
four-year-old drug court. "Before the drug treatment court existed,
it wasn't necessarily an option unless it was judge-imposed."

The crackdown follows a similar initiative the VPD launched in
November, in which police targeted people injecting drugs within a
four-block radius of the city's supervised injection site on East
Hastings. Police arrested 13 people in that project.

Boyle said that for several years arresting people for open use drugs
in the city wasn't in the public interest. That policy has led to a
dramatic increase in the illegal open air drug market.

"By not enforcing it previously over the last few years, the message
we were sending to users probably was that it was OK," Boyle said.

Police now have the full support of the federal Crown office, which
approves drug charges. Boyle believes the enforcement is working.

"There has been a behavioural change."

Dianne Tobin, president of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users,
told the Courier last month the police action is a waste of money and
pushes drug users into other neighbourhoods.

Tobin said the city needs more injection sites and a legal site for
crack users to smoke their cocaine.