EXTREME NEED

Discovery of a major methamphetamine laboratory in Langley City drives
the point home: something has to be done about the growing crime
problem. And it all keeps going back to drugs.

And whatever is done will have to be extreme.

At one extremity is the American method of fighting drugs - they even
call it "The War on Drugs" down there. Spend a lot of money to catch
users and traffickers, spend more money to put them in jail, and spend
even more money when they get out of jail and start over again.

Or there's the European extremity, led by the Netherlands model. Treat
drug abuse like a disease, treat addictions the way you would treat
any chronic, metabolic requirement, and regulate the dickens out of
the way drugs are produced, sold, and used.

The American model strives to cut off supply, and thereby limit
demand. If properly conducted, the War on Drugs should be effective in
reducing the number of addicts who get started, reducing the ability
of individuals to get illegal drugs in the first place.

But once they're addicted, drug users automatically become criminals -
not only because their drug-use is illegal, but because, as addicts,
the drugs they must have are so expensive that the only way they can
pay for them is through illegal means.

To an addict, drugs are as necessary to survival as insulin to a
diabetic. That's the way they see it, and no amount of preaching or
denial among the rest of us will change that. They must get their
fixes to go on.

In this neck of the woods, that has come to mean a livelihood of
stealing cars to provide transport to obtain and re-sell other
people's belongings.

In Holland, for many addicts it means stopping by the drugstore after
work to buy a month's prescription of heroin cigarettes.

Either way, Canada's middle-of-the-road approach isn't working, and it
can't work.