FILM AIMS TO 'FIX' DRUG PROBLEM

During a public forum in Nanaimo that followed the documentary film Fix --
The Story of an Addicted City, Philip Owen, the former mayor of Vancouver,
posed a question.

"Are there any elected officials in the audience, or any police officers?"
Owen asked the group of about 110 people at Avalon Cinema Center Friday.

An unfair question, perhaps, since it was just the first nighttime showing
of Nettie Wild's acclaimed film, which makes a convincing case for
implementing "harm reduction" policies in communities ravaged by illicit
drug use.

Nevertheless, Owen's point was well-taken.

Were the powers that be -- or those who should be paying attention to the
issue locally -- actually taking an interest in the film?

The 2000 documentary offers a gritty, stirring portrait of some of the
people trying to address the drug problem in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
They range from a feisty church activist promoting safe injection sites to
the embattled Owen as he lays out his "four pillar approach" for frustrated
business-owners and unsympathetic members of Vancouver city council.

"If we carry on business as usual in the same old way then we're going to
continue to have death, disease, crime and suffering," Owen told the forum.

Owen, Wild and others are spreading the word throughout B.C. about harm
reduction, which is viewed as a more holistic way of dealing with the
social, medical and economic repercussions of drug abuse.

But Owen said the fact that no one answered his question indicates some
communities are still in a state of denial.

Two weeks ago at a Kamloops forum, Owen noted, someone insisted there
wasn't a drug problem, until a street nurse reported exchanging 96,000 needles.

Elaine Clark of Tillicum Haus Native Friendship Society in Nanaimo said
their crew had been exchanging thousands of needles a week, but the program
ran out of funds on April 30.

She said the Nanaimo Street Outreach program exchanges an additional
100,000-200,000 needles a year.

"I can tell you, there's crack houses in the north end," said Clark, the
society's HIV program supervisor and clinic nurse. "When we were out in the
needle van we were out through the whole city."

Lora Johnston-Corbett, a former drug user, who is completing a master's
degree in social work at the University of Victoria, also appeared at the
weekend forums.

Johnston-Corbett wants to start a drug-user group in Nanaimo similar to the
Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, the outfit featured in Fix that was
attempting to establish safe injection sites.

"We're in a different town and we have different issues," said
Johnston-Corbett, who has been drug-free for 14 years.

"But it would be nice to have a voice in the community and a place to come
together for support."