HARM REDUCTION WON'T WORK: MP, CITY TALK DRUGS

Randy White is used to debating weighty federal issues in the House of
Commons - but yesterday he was at Abbotsford City Hall to speak on a local
concern that topped the agenda at a recent town hall meeting.

White, Langley-Abbotsford Canadian Alliance MP, briefed mayor and council
on federal drug strategies, and civic politicians were unanimous in
agreeing with him that "harm reduction" will not work, and is not a model
Abbotsford should follow.

To that end, council voted to endorse a motion from Coun. Simon Gibson,
stating council is "unequivocally opposed" to safe injection sites, needle
exchanges, free-standing methadone clinics and mobile drug dispensing units.

City council also voted to strike a made-in-Abbotsford task force on how to
deal with crimes that have created a "social malaise" in the city, such as
drug dealing and prostitution.

The resolution will be forwarded to the Fraser Health Authority and to the
14 members of the federal panel that studied a nationwide drug strategy.

"(Vancouver Mayor) Larry Campbell is full of hogwash when he talks about
(harm reduction) programs in places like Zurich," White told council.

"You can't get people off of drugs by hiving them into ghettoes where they
can shoot up."

Gibson, in making his motion, said: "I was looking over the Alcoholics
Anonymous 12 Steps, and there's not one step in them that says, keep on
drinking and you'll be okay eventually."

Harm reduction should be the core of a federal drug program, the
recommendations of a federal parliamentary committee said in December.

But that didn't sit well with the committee's vice-chair, White, who has
long called harm reduction "harm extension."

The Special Parliamentary Committee on the Non-medical Use of Drugs (mainly
Liberal MPs, White pointed out) spent 18 months in hearings across the
country, and heard hundreds of expert witnesses.

It's now up to the federal government to decide whether to implement all or
some of the recommendations.

In October, hundreds of people turned out for a two-hour meeting at city
hall in a public forum to gather ideas on solving drug abuse, prostitution
and other crime problems plaguing various Abbotsford neighbourhoods,
including the old downtown.

Staff told council the meeting successfully achieved its purpose, and was
not a forum to complain or criticize council and the city's employees.

The major recommendation to come out of the October forum called for
council to strike a task force - made up of civic politicians, city staff
and citizens - to develop strategies to tackle problems such as drug abuse.

Opinions were mixed over the idea of establishing safe injection sites for
drug users or red light districts for prostitution. Rehabilitation of
addicts was stressed by many speakers at the forum, as was the hiring of
more police officers and seizing the vehicles of prostitution clients.