HOMICIDE STATS ON INJECTION DRUG USERS RAISE QUESTIONS
ABOUT SOCIETY

Editor, The Times:

A recent study of young injection drug users in Vancouver reveals some
startling statistics about women who shoot up. It also raises some
serious questions about the rest of us--the general public, and the
researchers, policy makers and practitioners who are working to solve
the city's addiction issues.

According to the study, which was conducted by the BC Centre for
Excellence in HIV/AIDS and published in Harm Reduction Journal, young
women who use injection drugs are more than 50 times more likely to
die prematurely than women who don't inject drugs. You'd expect the
primary cause of death to be drug-related--a fatal overdose or a
health problem--but it isn't. It's murder. Women under 30 who inject
drugs are more likely to die from homicide than the illicit drugs they
use.

It's no surprise that almost 80% of the women in the study were sex
trade workers. Drug use and prostitution seem to go hand in hand. And
considering all the media coverage of the Pickton trial, the
prostitution-homicide connection isn't new to us anymore either.

What is surprising about the study is that the authors call primarily
for after-the-fact public health interventions, such as employment
training for sex workers and access to both emergency shelters and
long-term housing. Even the proposed structural changes are related to
helping girls after they become prostitutes--legal and policy reform
regarding sex work in general.

Is it just me or is this discussion a few bricks short of a full
load?

First of all, issues involving injection drugs, prostitution and
murder are far too big for public health to handle all by itself. This
is a massive, multi-faceted problem requiring attention from
everyone--parents, educators, social services, police, health care
providers, and the list goes on. In other words, we all need to work
together to help young people and other vulnerable citizens.

The other missing brick is related to our own cultural misgivings. No
little girl in this country (or in the world, for that matter) aspires
to be an injection drug user. And no little girl dreams about becoming
a prostitute one day. The fact that so many girls in Canada grow up
and do both tells us something's wrong with the way we live. There is
something in our culture that fails a significant number of young
people, let's them down in fundamental ways, let's them fall through
the cracks and leaves them to get pounded on by life. And it happens a
long time before they show up on Hastings and Main.

Some organizations and individuals already get this idea. That's why
we have early childhood development initiatives like Success by 6 and
Invest in Kids. The experts have known for a long time that children
who receive the right care and nurturing early on in life are less
likely to drop out of school or develop problems with drugs and crime.

But many of the rest of us are still learning. How else can we explain
that a full 25% of BC's 250,000 kids under six years old aren't
developmentally ready for school by age six? How come we still don't
connect a child's early experiences with who they become as teens and
young adults?

And how come we don't invest any time in overhauling the systems we
have in place to supposedly help children develop into solid, balanced
adults?

Most people would agree that our education, health, social services
and justice systems aren't working the way we would like. Indeed much
of our current set up can be credited with contributing to an
increasing number of kids' negative early experiences.

Since our systems reflect our values as a society, perhaps we need to
take another crack at defining what's important to us. That's the
first step toward making better plans and becoming more effective at
raising healthy families.

The bottom line is this: there are a great many things that a great
many of us need to do to ensure more young women don't end up working
the streets, sticking needles in their arms and ending up as homicide
statistics.

Nicole Pankratz,

Publications Officer,

Centre for Addictions Research of BC