DON'T CONFUSE ADDICTS WITH HOMELESS

The battle against street drug abuse in downtown Victoria has once again
taken an ugly turn.

In their zealous pursuit of hard-drug users, some Victoria police are
targeting transient homeless youth, confiscating their possessions and
refusing to return them until a fine is paid.

While a $70 fine may seem inconsequential to the average working person,
for a homeless person with no income, it is often unattainable.

Business owners represented by the Chamber of Commerce and Victoria City
Council would seem to support this persecution of the homeless poor. A
straw poll taken of many unaligned small downtown businesses indicates that
they do not support such draconian treatment of our city's poorest citizens.

Many "core" business owners perceive panhandling as a problem, but often
panhandlers are not hard drug users. If a panhandler is leaning against or
sitting on a backpack containing all of their worldly possessions, there is
a better than good chance that they are panhandling for food, not drugs.

In our zeal to eradicate hard drug dealing and abuse on the downtown
streets, we must not condone police abuse of truly homeless people who are
trying to survive without a social safety net.

Homelessness and drug addiction are, for the most part, two separate problems.

Robert Garfat,

Manager,

Dark Horse Books,

Victoria.