ON PINS AND NEEDLES

While many professionals endorse safe injection sites and clean needles for
drug addicts, other counsellors think a combination of jail and treatment
is the best answer.

As an addiction counsellor, I have worked in the field for the past 10
years. I work currently in the Downtown Eastside and have worked with the
most challenging addicts from Surrey, New Westminster and Vancouver.

Over-all, it is a free ride for all addicts. The number of lives lost daily
is disgusting; at times, it is impossible to provide treatment plans for
the addicted individual.

In the Downtown Eastside, it's okay to live like an animal searching for
more ways to use drugs and finding more drugs. I am sick about the
professionals who encourage fixing sites, heroin programs, enable pot
smokers and validate addicts' drug-seeking behaviours.

I have ideas that can help clean up this area. They include bringing in
more drug courts and making addicts accountable for collecting welfare,
disability payments and criminal activities. If there are no consequences,
the addict will take anything to the extreme.

I have friends who work in the field of addiction in the United States
where harm reduction is not very popular. The focus is on community-based
services using jail, treatment and/or jail and treatment.

These are suffering individuals who are very sick and need direction, not
enabling. Enabling kills.

Patricia Pike

Port Coquitlam