DRUG PROBLEM EVERYWHERE, SAYS OWEN

The rest of the world is slowly figuring out what Philip Owen learned
during his nine years as mayor of Vancouver: The war on drugs just isn't
working.

Owen has been travelling the world talking about his experience
delivering a solution to the drug problem to the city of Vancouver.

"The options are, can we incarcerate our way out of here? No, clearly.
We know that isn't working. We are not going to legalize our way out
of it and we are not going to ignore it, so we are going to manage
it," he said at a John Howard Society symposium held in Kelowna on
Thursday.

"Decriminalization and legalization are going to happen, there is no
doubt about it," he told his audience.

Owen said even some ardent conservatives in the U.S. are turning to
that idea and many countries in Europe and elsewhere are considering
it as well.

He said $700 billion per year is made from the sale of cocaine and
heroin around the world and it is all going into the hands of
criminals, perhaps terrorists as well.

Owen said if governments can regulate alcohol, tobacco and
pharmaceuticals, it can legalize, tax and regulate these drugs as
well. The taxes could easily pay for treatment.

Owen's term as mayor began in 1993, two years before the phenomenon of
crack cocaine began destroying many in his city as it did elsewhere.

"The whole environment changed," he said.

"Then we decided to do something and the citizens of Vancouver said
the status quo is not an option because whatever we were doing was not
working."

He put together a symposium of people from around the world to find
new solutions and borrowed the four pillars approach from the Swiss.
It operates on the idea that to tackle the drug problem, four actions
must operate together: enforcement, treatment, harm reduction and
prevention.

What they saw in Vancouver is nearly identical to Kelowna's crime and
drug problem in the past three to five years, but Owen gave some
encouragement to local social services agencies.

"I have been to conferences in Belfast, Paris, Lisbon and New York and
I just went to Afghanistan and met with military and government people
trying to wrestle with the problem," he said. "Don't feel guilty about
Kelowna. The drug problem is everywhere."