WHITE SAYS CANADA'S DRUG TREATMENT STRATEGY HEADED DOWN WRONG ROAD

As local MP Randy White sees it, it's a matter of "whether we have the
social conscience to put these people where they can be helped. It's not
easy but accommodating their drug use is not helping them."

White is head of the Commons committee on drug abuse, a multi-party group
that includes Liberal MP Hedy Fry and NDP MP Libbie Davies, and which is
due to report its findings on Dec. 9. In an exclusive interview with The
Star on Friday, White said he can't disclose the specifics of the report in
advance, but he said there will be controversy generated by the fine details.

"There are 19 recommendations which are pretty good to my way of thinking,
there are 10 related to 'harm reduction', and there are four or five
regarding marijuana, which is not a big issue," said White.

White said he is troubled by the imminent prospects of the 'harm reduction'
experiments which he believes the federal government will implement with
"three heroin maintenance centres, as pilot projects in Montreal, Toronto
and Vancouver." Vancouver city council has pledged to initiate 'safe
injection sites' in the Downtown East Side within a month.

"I label them harm extension," said White. "Vancouver council has been sold
a bill of goods, they are making a dreadful mistake, and the federal
Liberals are about to buy into it."

In June, White travelled to Europe to visit the 'harm reduction' sites in
the three countries which have adopted the program: Germany, Holland and
Switzerland. He said he learned "three significant things. One, it creates
a major social magnet from other countries, because addicts will come here.
Two, it is not eliminating the drug problem; they're not getting off drugs
because their addictions are being maintained. Three, the human carnage
around these sites is unbelievable."

"Frankfurt was the most disgusting I've seen," said White, adding that
because the German city was in the running for the designation as the
European Union's financial centre, the city fathers moved the 'harm
reduction' programs away from this area and out into a shabby industrial
area which had survived the bombing raids of World War II.

"They even supplied a bus from downtown to the drug centre," said White.
"The centre wasn't clean; there was blood and dirt on the floor.

"They use weasel words. 'Low threshold' treatment means that people walk in
and nobody asks anything. They just give them a needle and put them in this
room with a table along three sides. There's mirrors so they can find their
veins and shoot up. Then they take them to a waiting room and if they sit
there too long they escort them to the street, where they can do their
crime and get another hit from a dealer, then it's back into the centre.
Unless they walk too far, and then they just shoot up there and then."

White says this system is defended by self-serving interests.

"The people defending this are working in the system. They're extremely
defensive, overly supportive.

"Amsterdam should be studying how marijuana use affects memory retention,
how it affects scholastic standards. But they reply that 'we don't study
that.' It seems everytime that you ask whether something is working they
quickly respond that 'it's working well but we can't prove it.'

"My favourite quote was from a German prosecutor, who said 'the way to
legalization goes one pilot project at a time, not all at once'," said White.

White said that once Vancouver adopts 'safe injection' programs, the
effects will ripple out into the community at large, including the Fraser
Valley.

"Police have to turn a blind eye to facilitate this," said White. "There
will be a legal fight when someone gets caught out in the valley, a
challenge because you can't change the law for one group in the city and
not for the others out in the valley."

White said the only answer is to create more treatment facilities, perhaps
by following the lead of a program operated by authorities in the Mexican
State of Baja California's Ensenada Prison. This "Second Chance" program,
launched in 1995, has shaved recividism rates from 83 per cent to less than
10 per cent.

When it was first launched, over 90 per cent of the prisoners were still
addicted to, and using, heroin or methedrine. Participants, including hired
killers, robbers and drug dealers, were first required to complete a
week-long detox program that included vitamins and minerals, as well as a
sauna and exercise component to "sweat out" metabolites in the user's body.
This program, called Narconon, reduces the trauma experienced by hard-core
users and has had "excellent results" since 1965.

Over the next three months, the rehab program includes education,
self-respect and life skills modules. A University of Baja study found that
over the first six years of this program at Ensenada, 3,000 prisoners
participated and 1,682 had been released for an average of 2.5 years. Only
168 returned to prison during those six years -- less than 10 per cent
compared to over 80 per cent in previous years. Baja State has now expanded
the program to all of its facilities, including the infamous Tijuana Prison.

White saw this program first-hand two weeks ago as a guest of officials in
the U.S. and Mexico, and White hopes to take a delegation of Canadians down
there to visit and examine the program. He also wants to bring U.S. Drug
Enforcement Agency officers to the Fraser Valley in January for a town hall
meeting on the international drug problem.

"U.S. and Mexican authorities are adamant that the answer is not to
maintain people on drugs," said White. "And it's not a case of the 'war on
drugs' -- the DEA will tell you that they have not won it. But they have a
whole department concentrating on rehabilitation, education; searching for
ways to get people off drugs. Whereas here we have a defeatist atttuide
that says we've lost." However, White says he's not giving up.

"I would like to see two separate prisons cleaned out and set up for the
purpose of drug and alcohol rehabilitation, and I'm likely to get my way on
that. I'd like to see us start from ground zero and implement the Second
Chance program here."

White is talking to B.C. and Ontario Solicitor Generals, Rich Coleman and
Bob Runciman, about this program. He notes that he frequently hears from
parents who are frustrated at the lack of appropriate treatment facilities
in this province, and some of these people have told him that because of
waiting lists for the programs here, many of the addicts who wish to quit
can't get into a facility while they still have the urge to get clean.

"We could only put people there who want to do it," said White. "It's a
matter of getting a horse to water and making it drink."