SPACED-OUT AND SEEDY WHAT'S HAPPENING TO VANCOUVER?

Re: City's drug culture unsettling to tourists, Sept. 8

This is all boringly familiar. Vancouver is the best planned, worst
governed and worst policed city on the continent. It is quite a monumental
achievement to turn a vibrant, safe and livable downtown into a depressing
stew of addicts, scavengers and beggars.

While city council likes to blame all other levels of government, it is
easily most responsible for this state of affairs. It is unaccountably
unable to eliminate the lawless open drug market that fuels most of the
misery. Zurich's similarly disastrous Needle Park experiment (1986-92), in
which the open sale of drugs was tolerated, created all the same problems
that the Hastings Street bazaar has. Ten years later, spaced-out Vancouver
is still searching for solutions. Stop wasting time and lives, and give us
our city back.

Sean Byrne, Vancouver