DRUGS: MP'S EYES OPENED IN MEXICO

After a trip to Mexico, Randy White wants a new weapon added to Canada's
arsenal in the war on drugs.

Randy White thought he had seen everything when it came to drug use,
addiction, and recovery.

Then the Langley-Abbotsford MP went to a prison in Mexico.

"I saw rooms full of literally hundreds of people off drugs," White said.
"It really was unbelievable."

The MP is now hoping to eventually introduce Second Chance Program (SCP) to
Canada.

White spent three days in Mexico last month, meeting with more than 200
legislators from the U.S., Mexico, Central and South America, to discuss
illegal drug use and trafficking in the Americas.

During his visit, he was able to visit Ensenada Prison which uses the SC, a
non-religious and non-medical prison-based crime and drug rehabilitation
model .

The program is run by a non-profit organization based in California. Since
1995, it has been working with the Department of Corrections for the State
of Baja California, Mexico, to develop and implement a drug and crime
rehabilitation program in Ensenada Prison.

Statistics show the program has greatly reduced the number of criminals
re-offending and the occurrence of violence and drug use in prison. The
program has achieved a success rate of more than 90 per cent in
rehabilitating prison inmates, 85 per cent of which entered the prison
addicted to heroin.

"They are accurate," White said of the numbers. "There's no lies to this
stuff . . . I've been through it, I've seen it."

Due to the program's success, the Baja California government expanded the
SPC to all of its facilities. The Tijuana Prison reported a 15 per cent
rehabilitation rate of the 6,000 inmates in its facility over the first 16
months.

Independent analysis show the rate of recidivism since the inception of SCP
has shown a drop from 83 per cent to under 10 per cent for those inmates
who participated in even part of the program. Last year, the the local
attorney general and police chief reported a 55 per cent drop in the
community-wide crime rate, which they attributed to SPC.

The program consists of four parts: drug rehabilitation, education,
self-respect, and life skills..

White took particular interest in the drug rehabilitation module. The first
step is to use vitamins, minerals and specialized techniques to decrease
the pain and trauma of drug withdrawal. Exercise and a sauna-based
detoxification are also utilized.

There are no needles or methadone, White said, yet the program works.

The local MP called the whole program a model of how drug rehabilitation
should be done and Canada should take note.

"Mexico and the U.S. are looking for real answers to getting them [addicts]
off drugs," he said.

The hardest part will be to get the government to look at alternatives,
because, White said, the government isn't willing to spend the time on
research, and continues to tout harm reduction as a solution.

White sees the SCP as an alternative to harm reduction - an approach he
does not support. Harm reduction includes needle exchanges and safe
injection sites.

"This harm reduction is not harm reduction, it's harm extension," White said.

He's visited safe injection sites in various European cities, including
Amsterdam, Holland, Bern, and Zurich and they don't work, he argued.

"Every single one of them was a magnet for drug addicts," he said.

White, the opposition Solicitor General critic, is also the vice-chair of
the Parliamentary committee studying the non-medical use of drugs. The
committee is scheduled to release a report regarding illegal drug use in
Canada next week.

For more information on the Second Chance Program visit www.penalrehab.org.