PUBLIC FORUM ON DRUG ABUSE YOUR CHANCE TO GET INFORMED

If you want to know just how fast a major social problem can manifest
itself in a community, just ask the people of Vancouver.

In 10 short years, the Downtown Eastside went from a neighbourhood of
down-and-outs to an out-and-out IV drug shooting gallery. There's been
serious drug use in that part of Vancouver for decades but it largely
went on behind closed doors, mostly out of sight and out of mind.

When I left there in 1993, the city was experiencing a major epidemic
of overdose deaths, 300 that year-almost one a day.

That death rate has stayed stubbornly high since then as cheap heroin
and cocaine has flooded the streets. And the junkies themselves have
taken to the streets.

No more shooting up behind closed doors, the action is going on in
full public view almost as a cry for help.

The epidemic of drug use there has become political, deciding the fate
of former mayor, Philip Owen, and the current mayor, Larry Campbell.

Owen was tossed by his own party for daring to talk about doing
something about the epidemic and Campbell was elected as someone who
would do more than just talk.

He endorsed the city's (indeed, country's) first legal safe injection
site opened just last month amidst much controversy.

If anyone in Kelowna thinks our own city is immune to a drug abuse
epidemic of our own, think again.

Kelowna is a place where people want to be, and though try as some
might to reduce junkies to something less than human, they are people
too with many of the same reasons for wanting to live here.

Mayor Walter Gray is to be lauded for trying to bring the subject to
the fore by hosting a public forum on addiction next month in Kelowna.

If nothing else, he is a canny politician, one who knows which way the
wind blows and in the case of IV drug use, it blows in from Vancouver.

Both Owen and Campbell are champions of the Four Pillar approach which
uses equal parts education, harm reduction, treatment and
enforcement.

Next month's forum will focus on how Kelowna can adapt them to our own
unique situation.

Like it or not, Kelowna has a drug problem.

And as they say, you can be part of the problem or you can be part of
the solution.

I urge everyone to find the time to make it to the public forum on
addictions Nov. 26 at the Rotary Centre.

If you don't, you give up your right to bitch the next time you step
over a used syringe lying on the street.