DESPITE POLICE EFFORTS, 'DRUGS ARE HERE TO STAY'

Having grown up in Vancouver, I too can remember Hastings and Main and
environs in the balmier days of the 1940s and 1950s, and even the 1960s
(Support drug crackdown to give streets back to families, Letters, April
14). Those were times when kids were safe on the street, busting a bottle
club (an unlicensed, BYOB drinking establishment) was a big news item and a
murder was grist for a month's newspaper stories. In most of the city's
neighbourhoods, only the most paranoid locked their doors.

Despite its current crime and drug scene, Vancouver remains one of the
safest cities in North America. That's why so many people keep moving here.
Nor is there anything new about the drug scene. As a Pacific coast port of
entry, Vancouver has long been known as the heroin "capital" of Canada --
since well before letter writer Kevin Davie and I were born.

Unfortunately, drugs are here to stay. The only defences are accurate,
honest information for children, and harm reduction for the few who get hooked.

Mr. Davie's alternative, more laws and more enforcement, such as the War
Against Drugs in the U.S., has created zones in American cities into which
even armed police will venture only with considerable caution, and suburbs
where people wall themselves in and hire their own guards.

The syndrome producing that situation is not hard to figure out: More
enforcement, higher drug prices. Higher drug prices produce users more
desperate for money and more dealers eager for high profits. It's pretty
simple, but some people still refuse to see it.

Jack Miller

Port Clements