POOR ADVICE ON ADDICTION

Editor, The News:

Re: Unsafe injection (News views, Nov. 9).

I think Tom Fletcher has to to take a closer look at what these injection
sites are offering instead of just the negative things. You will see that
the good in this situation is outweighing the bad.

First of all the government is handing out clean needles and crack pipes in
order to keep AIDS, HIV, Hepatitis C and other incurable diseases off the
street by getting drug users to stop sharing and reusing needles etc. You
have hastily concluded that this will soon lead the government giving out
drugs. The government has never mentioned this; Mr. Fletcher has decided to
jump to this conclusion with out looking at the facts.

Mr. Fletcher has complained that this "doomed experiment" in Vancouver will
take other cities to "junkie hell along with it." Vancouver was a junkie
town and will continue to be a junkie town unless something is done to
change this. At least the people that have set up these "needle exchanges"
have started to take action to reduce the spread of diseases, which in turn
will reduce the cost of health care. All I have heard from Mr. Fletcher is
what we should not do, not what we should do to reduce the drug addicts in
Vancouver.

Mr. Fletcher has argued that no one wants to pay for the "safe injection
sites." Well I see it as a choice the taxpayer can make himself or herself.
They can choose to pay for damaged buildings and vandalism that drug users
inflict on property along with health care bills for treating a lifetime
patients with hepatitis C and other incurable diseases from not using a
clean needle. Or they can pay in to something that is reducing the coast of
health care in the long run and getting junkies off the streets. lt is the
taxpayers' choice but I know as a taxpayer my choice is clear.

I know that when I drive in to the "bad part" of Vancouver I feel scared
and have to roll up my windows and lock the doors, but I truly do get a
feeling of ease when I see a needle exchange both set up because I can see,
with my own two eyes, that something is being done about the problems of
drug addiction in Vancouver, other than just bunches of plans and talk
about it.

I would also like to say thanks to the people that are out in the streets
addressing the problem head on.

Nicole Patrick, Pitt Meadows