[Vancouver Sun Editorial Introduction:
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]

ON PINS AND NEEDLES, 1 of 5

After reading about Constable Al Arsenault's ardent desire to give drug
addicts "the cure, not the poison," I was reminded of H.L. Mencken's
observation that sometimes in a democracy people get the type of society
they want -- nice and hard.

At times like this, I really miss the late Gil Puder of the Vancouver
police department. He had a knack for logically explaining the proper and
ethical role of the police in regards to the problems associated with drug
use. He could clearly see that the "war on drugs" was really a war on
people and that, although noble in its intent, it aggravated the very
problems it sought to correct.

Gil's ideas had a great impact on myself and other officers. We have formed
an organization called Law Enforcement against Prohibition (LEAP) to help
continue Gil's vision of bringing common sense back into society's methods
of dealing with the horrors of drug addiction. A copy of Gil's 1998
presentation to the Fraser Institute can be read at www.leap.cc. It offers
a refreshing alternative to the treadmill of discredited ideas being
advocated by Constable Arsenault.

John A. Gayder

St. Catharines, Ont.