JUNKIES LOBBY AGAINST DRUG ENFORCEMENT

A multitude of press releases are issued every day.

Among the ones I receive, some are written by a group you've actually heard
of, but not many. Most breathlessly announce the appointment of so-and-so
or the start of a new initiative to raise money for this cause or that one.
And most are simply filled in that circular receptacle beside the desk.

But one caught my eye on the weekend as it was heading to the waste bin.
Because it had the logos of the BC Persons with Aids Society, AIDS
Vancouver and YouthCO Aids Society, I was about to ignore it until I
noticed the phrase "drug cops" in the headline.

So I read it.

The document refers to a letter written to Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell
and the police board. In the letter, these organizations state they are
writing to "express our strong opposition to the redeployment of 50 police
officers from various community police stations and duties to the Downtown
Eastside, as well as to request the funding for an additional 44 new police
officers, ostensibly for the purpose of bolstering the city's ongoing
efforts to address the health and social programs affecting the Downtown
Eastside."

The letter refers to something called VANDU, which I later discovered
stands for the Vancouver Association of Network of Drug Users. No kidding.
Junkies are now a special interest group (SIGs) in this nutty province. And
they are being supported by a collection of other SIGs who milk the public
teat just because they have the acronym A-I-D-S in their name, and
governments shovel money at them.

If I read the opening paragraph of the press release correctly, they want
to eliminate or reduce one of the so-called "four pillars" of Mayor
Campbell's drug strategy, enforcement, because the other three pillars are
not yet fully in place. (The so-called four pillars are enforcement,
education, harm reduction and treatment.)

Here's what it says: "Community AIDS organizations are united in their
opposition to the funding of additional police as a strategy to address the
ongoing drug problems on the Downtown Eastside without additional
substantial resources for the other three pillars of the four pillar approach."

If I understand their logic correctly, because the (Larry) Campbell
administration has yet to get all the "pillars" in place, we should
knockout the only pillar standing and let the inmates run the asylum. The
police should turn the streets over to the various crack dealers, heroin
sellers, coke pushers, thieves, robbers, pimps and assorted other scumbags
because the mean-well-but-haven't-a-clue COPE council couldn't organize a
two-man attack on an outhouse. Hell, why don't we just invite the Hells
Angels and the Vietnamese gangsters to form their own version of government?

An Associated Press release announcing a protest march contains the
following quote: "As a drug user in the Downtown Eastside, I know what's
best for my health and it's not more police," said Cindy Thomson,
apparently a member of VANDU.

She knows what's best for her health and she's a junkie? I have feeling
that if she really was worried about her health, she would not be injecting
poison into veins. But what do I know?

For most of the '90s the area euphemistically called the Downtown Eastside,
more commonly known as The Skids, was essentially ignored by a succession
of "progressive" police decisions. Calling crack dealers, who'd as soon cut
your heart out as look at you, "clients" was just the sort of fuzzy-headed
thinking that created Canada's only open air 24-hour drug bazaar.

Now that the police finally have a concerted, if still a little weak,
policy to attempt to deal with the problems of The Skids, the hand-wringers
are calling for them to withdraw. It really is unbelievable.

The streets of the Downtown Eastside are being controlled, ultimately, by
organized crime. Whatever efforts the police are making to try and regain
control should be applauded and supported. Junkies, now a special interest
group lobbying government, spare me.

A quick word about the war in Iraq; media coverage has virtually saturated
the airwaves, print media and the Internet.

But, I couldn't help notice on Sunday, that the CBC's main Web site had two
links to photo essays. One was about previous day's anti-war and
anti-American protests.

The other dealt with a bomb which hit, apparently, four homes in the
Baghdad neighbourhood of Raghiba Khatoon. The bomb didn't detonate and no
one was injured.

There were no photo essays showing the jubilant citizens of Safwan kissing
American soldiers, tears running down their faces, or using their shoes to
pound on the face of Saddam as the huge poster was being ripped down, as
depicted in the vivid live TV pictures transmitted around the world.

If you get your news from the taxpayer-funded CBC, you'd never even know of
the reactions of the average Iraqi welcoming their American liberators.

Just an observation.