FIXING ADDICTION

As Mayor Of Vancouver, Philip Owen Spearheaded A Major Change In Drug
Treatment Policies. It Cost Him His Job, But, As Revealed In A New
Documentary, It Also Changed Canadian Cities' Approach To The Problem

Vancouver, as depicted in Nettie Wild's 2002 documentary Fix: the Story of
an Addicted City, is a far cry from the pristine Pacific pearl it markets
itself as abroad. An estimated 4,000 crack and heroin addicts roam its
Downtown Eastside neighbourhood, strung out, filthy, desperate and, until
recently, voiceless. That changed in the late 1990s, with the formation of
the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU), an addict-based advocacy
group at the centre of Wild's film. The addicts found a sympathetic ear in
an unlikely place: the city's otherwise conservative, business-friendly
mayor Philip Owen.

Elected in 1993, Owen presided over the surging drug use and explosion of
the addict population in the heart of Vancouver's downtown, a phenomenon he
blames on waves of crack - and guns - shipped in from the States. By 1996,
convinced that an American-style war on drugs was futile, he decided to
re-think the city's drug policy. By 2001, his Four Pillars drug policy -
consisting of prevention, treatment, enforcement and harm reduction - was
adopted, albeit grudgingly, by city council. As a result, however, Owen was
forced out of office by his own party in February 2002. The following
November, he watched by the sidelines as they were crushed in the municipal
elections, in large part due to their resistance to his popular policy.
Owen today is a vigorous advocate of progressive drug policies, and will be
in Montreal on Nov. 10, to discuss the film and take part in a series of
community forums. The Mirror spoke to Owen over the phone from his
Vancouver home.

Mirror: When did you start getting closer to the Downtown Eastside addicts?

Philip Owen: It became clear to me that you couldn't incarcerate your way
out of this problem, because the war on drugs doesn't work. I learned that
at a conference I attended in Stanford in 1995. You can't legalize your way
out of it, you can't ignore it, so you manage it. And in order to manage
it, you have to know what you're managing. I felt it was my job to get as
close to the issue as possible and the only way was to go to the area and
talk to the people involved, and that's what I did.

So they started to trust me and tell me all sorts of things, and I had
several afternoon tea parties. I'd get the needle exchange people to gather
up 10 or 15 of the hardest-core drug users and we'd take over a little
restaurant between 2 and 5 o'clock. You'd listen to these kids, between 15
and 25, and they'd tell me what their problems are.

I just got tremendous trust. And I told Ottawa that we'd deliver them a
bottom-up, street-oriented, citizen-managed, citizen-controlled,
citizen-input solution. But the whole thing is public health and public
order, and if you're the mayor of a city you're elected to represent all
the citizens. That's what I felt was appropriate and that was part of my
job. And I enjoyed it.

Impotent Cities

M: What was going through your mind when you were seeing this problem grow
in the mid-'90s?

PO: Well, that we had to do something with it. These people are dying.
They're addicted. We deal with everything other kind of addiction, why
don't we deal with this addiction? You don't throw everybody else in jail
because they're addicted, so let's get real here. Let's not get involved in
all sorts of hard-nosed theory stuff that doesn't work and the war on
drugs, which has failed. Prohibition does nothing except create crime.
These people are sick. And if they're sick, let's treat them as a sick
person. And let the law enforcement officers go after the dealers and the
pushers.

M: Did you focus on that when you were mayor?

PO: Well, what can we at the city do? The Port Corporation's a federal
government operation. In Montreal, there's a million containers a year
going through the port there, and you can put all the cocaine used in
Canada in a year in about half of one of those containers. But what can the
mayor of Montreal do? Not much. That's federal property, and it's highly
unionized and there's an awful lot of unsavoury characters operating there.

So, fine, federal government can carry on with stopping the flow of the
goods in, same with George W. Bush. He says we're going to stop the product
coming into the United States, and it's ridiculous. It's just bizarre. His
scorched-earth policy of eradication in Colombia hasn't worked and hasn't
stopped the flow of cocaine and heroin coming into the United States and
from the U.S. up into Canada.

But I think Montreal, Quebec City and Vancouver are far and away the most
progressive cities when it comes to treating drug addiction.

No Panaceas

M: What other initiatives did you, as mayor, implement?

PO: We have the four-pillar approach. There's prevention, treatment,
enforcement and harm reduction. One of the 20 things in harm reduction is
safe injection sites. You need methadone, you need drug courts, you need
safe injection sites, a whole bunch of health services and contact centres
and care facilities. You need sobering centres, you need detox,
rehabilitation and counselling - we've got a contact centre in downtown
Vancouver, where the people that are really hurting can go and get off the
street, we've got a life-skill centre, where they can go and learn how to
apply for a job and look after their bank account. There's a dental school,
where students go down several nights a week and addicts can get dental
hygiene. One of the worst things when applying for a job or looking for an
apartment is having terrible breath and your teeth are all broken.

The list goes on and on. There's safe injection sites, and 37 other
[aspects]. On their own the sites won't do anything.

Fix: the Story of an Addicted City screens at the Cinema du Parc from
Friday, Nov. 7 to Thursday, Nov. 13. Community forums with Owen, filmmaker
Nettie Wild and members of VANDU will take place after selected showings.
Consult repertory listings for screenings and visit
www.canadawildproductions.com for community forum times