FORMER SF COP APPLAUDS FOUR PILLARS

To the editor:

Gerald Daubert's letter ("Lefty Garr ignores community's needs on drug
issue," Letters, May 8) raises some interesting points but sidesteps the
premise of harm reduction and safe injection sites: everyone is a vicitm so
to help one segment eventually helps everyone.

I am not an advocate for drug legalization-far from it. I spent the last 27
years chasing addicts and dealers and dealing with the results of their
activities. I just retired from the San Francisco police department and now
live up here. I completed a thesis for our Command College that focused on
how urban police would deal with medicalized heroin. Vancouver can be a
role model to the world in humane and common-sense approaches to addicts
and the surrounding public.

Safe sites work very well in Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Switzerland. The
Dutch system compels addicts to take responsibility for their lifestyles.
Crime statistics for the last four years show the trend is a stabilization
and lowering of many property crimes commonly associated with drug addict
populations.

It is not an answer unto itself, but it can be used with other tactics.
Addictions are part of the human condition and need to be dealt with as
such. What we don't need are closed conferences, as recently occured here,
that espouse a closed-minded and one-sided approach to dealing with
addiciton. The billions of dollars and thousands of lives wasted in the
U.S. should tell Canada that. Don't adopt the U.S.-style of drug war.
Retain your sovereignty and humanity.

Jim Speros,

Vancouver