The Globe and Mail's Series on Drug Abuse: Part 4

Margaret Wente concludes her week long series on drug abuse and drug policy. She talks about Billy Weselowski, a recovered drug addict who runs successful drug treatment programs.

But the "experts" (especially politicians and academics) don't want to listen to Weselowski. What could he possibly know about addiction? They know better! They have the multiple letters after their name. They have the countless "research" studies. And most importantly of all, they have access to the seemingly endless trough of public funds which are going to run countless programs to supposedly reduce harm. Not end addiction. Never end addiction. But reduce harm.

This would be a laughable movie about con men, if it weren't so serious a subject affecting a large number of marginalized human beings. One day insight will come to the powers at be and Insite and programs like it will be shut down immediately.

The Globe and Mail's Series on Drug Abuse: Part 3

Margaret Wente's series on drug abuse and addiction continues. Click here to read what's working and not working in other countries around the world.

The Globe and Mail's Series on Drug Abuse: Part 2

Margaret Wente's second column on Vancouver's drug addiction problem appeared today. This one focuses on the heavily biased "research" that supports Insite and other government funded organizations. Here's an interesting snippet about all of the "research" that has been done:

Garth Davies teaches research methodology at Simon Fraser University's school of criminology. He recently published an evaluation of all the research literature on safe-injection facilities, including Insite. He wasn't impressed. "[They] are too often credited with generating positive effects that are not borne out by solid empirical evidence," he wrote. "As a result of methodological and analytical problems ... all claims remain open to question."

In other words, just like a corrupt casino in Vegas, the fix was in with this "research" before it ever started. Those doing the "research" know what results they want and strangely enough, they get the data that supports their own bias ... and keeps on funding their initiatives too.

So many of the people involved with Insite et al are nothing more than con men running a back alley shell game. Yet they've convinced enough suckers that keeping the lives of poor drug addicts extended in the same miserable state is the best we can do. Here's one such sucker. He cites the presence of The Four Pillars: Harm Reduction, Treatment, Prevention, and Enforcement. The writer is either willfully ignorant or outright lying. For as David Berner has frequently and accurately said, what we actually have is one pillar and 3 matchsticks.

I know we can do better. It likely means forcibly incarcerating drug addicts - not in a jail, but in a proper medical treatment facility, thousands of kilometres away from the Downtown Eastside. But watch the outcry if that were ever to happen. You'll hear cries of "human rights violations". When they occur though, ask yourself whether these people really care about the welfare and future of the drug addicts or are more concerned about the funding and full employment of the social programs in place now. Follow the money, kids, always follow the money!

A Few Thoughts on Illegal Drug Policy

I responded at length to this posting by Los Angeles based columnist, Amy Alkon. I thought it worthy to repost here.

Illegal drug use is the #1 issue in Vancouver, BC where I live. A major swath of the city has been infested with lost souls who are high on one or more of: Heroin, crack cocaine, crystal meth, and a variety of others.

The consumption of these drugs costs money. It is estimated that 80% of all property crime (cars, homes, businesses) is directly related to drug use. With a 10:1 ratio of selling stolen property, $10,000 worth of stuff is stolen for every $1,000 worth of drugs. Not only has this driven insurance rates sky high, but it has also resulted in disruptions of phone and electrical service, as the drug addicts have ripped out wires in search of copper to sell for scrap metal.

Metro Vancouver was recently named as the organized crime capital of the world, with literally tens of thousands of homes being converted over to drug growing dens or drug manufacturing labs. Just the other week, an apartment complex in the supposedly good neighbourhood where I live (Kitsilano) had to be evacuated for a few days because some nutbar decided to turn his apartment into a crystal meth manufacturing facility. He killed himself with the fumes and potentially risked the lives of everyone else in the building from exposure to the fumes or an explosion.

From time to time we have gangstas (generally Asian or South Asian) roaming around the streets, firing automatic weapons into the cars & homes of their enemies. However, their bullets don't suddenly fall to the ground before hitting innocent people.

"BC Bud" is the high potency marijuana that others have mentioned. It is primarily shipped down to the U.S. in exchange for guns, cocaine, and heroin coming up here. Those items coming to us are not blessings on our society in any way, shape, or form.

The police have pretty much given up on arresting drug addicts and often drug dealers because our over lenient judges have continuously released these people back onto the street before the arresting cop starts his next shift.

Over in Switzerland, where they've had a pretty open "live and let live" policy about drug use, even they are rethinking it because of what it is doing to their society.

I don't precisely know what the ultimate solution to this Modern Day Plague is but its presence in my community has turned me from a pure Libertarian into a Pragmatic Libertarian.

One proposed policy I'm in growing support of is to forcibly incarcerate drug addicts into treatment facilities far away from the source of their misery. Many recovered drug addicts agree with this approach, saying that until a person hits rock bottom, they'll never go willingly. But it often takes many years of misery to reach that point. By then, many are dead.

Of course, there are significant forces against such a policy. They speak of "human rights" but I strongly believe what's really at the heart of their objections is that many, many people are now gainfully employed by the Poverty Industry. These are the folks who are supposedly employed to help these lost souls. They're very adept at applying band-aids but actually curing the drug addictions doesn't seem to be of much interest to them.

Am I cynical? I prefer the term "realistic and saddened observer"!

David Berner: Vancouver Province Editorial #2

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Let’s stop pushing policies that turn women into drug-addicted chattel
David Berner
The Province
16 Dec 2007

No sooner had the Pickton verdict been aired than every wiseacre in town felt compelled to add his wisdom to the mix. Most pointed to the obvious fact that the verdict does nothing to alleviate the conditions that allowed these monstrosities to... read more...

Tech Tags: The Province newspaper News

The Dark Underbelly of Vancouver

Last Friday I went downtown with a friend to meet two Quebecois girls at a pub in Gastown. This area of that pub is fine but it's right on the edge of what has often been described as "the worst neighbourhood in Canada". My friend parked his car in a monitored lot about 6 blocks away to reduce the chances of it getting plundered by some crack / heroin / crystal meth addict in search of funds to pay for his next fix. This meant we had to cross the "danger zone" twice.

Both heading there and coming back we saw scenes that were re-enactments from "Night of the Living Dead". You see dozens of lost souls on every block, down every lane, and in every doorway. The "look" in the eyes of these junkies is beyond description. Two cops walked by at one point and I immediately realized the futility of their job. For even if they were to arrest dozens of people, all of them would be back on the street the next day. Such is the state of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside today.

Yet at the same time we have countless members of what I call "DEPI" (the Downtown Eastside Poverty Industry) that rave on & on & on about what great things they're doing in the name of harm reduction. But ask them how many addicts they've successfully cured of their habits and hear nothing but silence.

There are SO MANY PARALLELS with the nonsense spun about Global Warming. It's my understanding that Montreal and Toronto are considering adopting similar programs to what we have here in Vancouver. I would vehemently urge them not to! But I am not the most well versed in the facts & figures of what's really happening out here. For that I turn to David Berner. He's done many things in his life including broadcasting, writing, and actually running a SUCCESSFUL drug rehab facility for a decade in Winnipeg.

On this subject he has written much. Here are some recent examples:

• http://thebernermonologues.blogspot.com/2007/01/wired-to-lose-comprehensive-examination.html
• http://thebernermonologues.blogspot.com/2007/02/pillars-galore.html
• http://thebernermonologues.blogspot.com/2007/06/running-on-empty-mobile-safe-sites.html
• http://thebernermonologues.blogspot.com/2007/05/at-last-at-long-bloody-last.html
  

Published!

A highly edited previous posting of mine was published in the Vancouver Sun today. They captured the gist of it except that they didn't clearly define "DEPI" = Downtown Eastside Poverty Industry. Hopefully people can infer it!

Vancouver's Downtown Eastside: Same Old Spin, Same Old Inaction

Vancouver Sun columnist Pete McMartin wrote a brilliant, cynical piece which you can read here. Fellow blogger and the best talkshow host in Canada, David Berner, beat me to the punch with this witty commentary. But I couldn't resist send this letter into the Vancouver Sun:

Pete McMartin's insightful column about the Downtown Eastside Poverty Industry (DEPI) hit so many chords that my head felt like a church bell tower on a Sunday morning! When exactly did it become acceptable for endless amounts of public money to be spent with absolutely no meaningful, helpful results being achieved? It seems that actually helping the less fortunate has been replaced with feeling good about dialoguing and conferencing with other like-minded holier-than-thou souls. With all this hot air being generated, Stephane Dion and Al Gore should declare this area an environmental hotspot!

I'd love to be a fly on the wall at a meeting of one of these DEPI groups. I'm convinced that the sentiment around the room would be that if we feel good about doing something then that's more important than actually accomplishing anything. Don't worry about the fact that drug use and poverty is actually increasing. That's just a minor technicality.

At the end of the day, everything looks pretty rosy for everyone employed by the poverty industry. Their bills are paid and since things are only getting worse, they have guaranteed job security for life. They've guilted large corporations into making donations, which in turn makes them feel better on the PR front. Nobody loses, right? Well, except for the thousands of people on the Downtown Eastside who are struggling to overcome their addictions and squalid surroundings. As a recovered heroin addict once told me, "I was never able to get myself better until I hit rock bottom." That's a sad fact that no one in DEPI wants to admit.

On a personal note, hearing about more public money being wasted like this especially galls me. Contrast this with the completely volunteer organization I'm involved with, BC Digital Divide. We allow anyone to apply for a computer but are careful that we're not just giving them out to be sold on the street or replace one they've received from us before. Just today I gave out two computers, to two lower income ladies. Indeed, it cost them nothing but I'm fairly confident that they will treat them with great respect and take good care of them. Our efforts are modeled on "a hand up". It seems that all of DEPI programs are based on "a hand out". And anyone who knows they can continually receive a hand out will generally keep on taking it forever.