Vancouver's Radical Approach to Drugs: Let Junkies Be Junkies

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



Vancouver's Radical Approach to Drugs: Let Junkies Be Junkies

By Vince Beiser, Miller-McCune Magazine. Posted November 18, 2008.

Welcome to North America's only officially sanctioned "supervised injection site."




Miller-McCune magazine and Miller-McCune.com draw on academic research and other definitive sources to provide reasoned policy options and solutions for today's pressing issues.


On a chilly, overcast morning in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia, a steady trickle of sallow-faced drug addicts shambles up to a storefront painted with flowers and the words "Welcome to Insite." One by one, they ring the doorbell and are buzzed into a tidy reception area staffed by smiling volunteers.

The junkies come here almost around the clock, seven days a week. Some just grab a fistful of clean syringes from one of the buckets by the door and head out again. But about 600 times a day, others walk in with pocketfuls of heroin, cocaine or speed that they've scored out on the street; sign in; go to a clean, well-lit room lined with stainless steel booths; and, under the protective watch of two nurses, shoot their drugs into their veins.

Welcome to North America's only officially sanctioned "supervised injection site." The facility sits in the heart of Vancouver's Downtown East Side, 10 square blocks that compose one of the poorest neighborhoods in all of Canada. The area is home to an estimated 4,700 intravenous drug users and thousands of crack addicts. For years, it's been a world-class health disaster, not to mention a public relations nightmare for a town that is famous for its beautiful mountains and beaches (and is gearing up to host the 2010 Winter Olympics). Nearly a third of the Downtown East Side's inhabitants are estimated to be HIV-positive, according to the United Nations Population Fund, a rate on par with Botswana's. Twice that number have hepatitis C. Dozens die of drug overdoses every year.

Largely in response to this nightmare neighborhood, Canada's third-largest city has embarked on a radical experiment: Over the last several years, it has overhauled its police and social services practices to re-frame drug use as primarily a public health issue, not a criminal one. In the process, it has become by far the continent's most drug-tolerant city, launching an experiment dramatically at odds with the U.S. War on Drugs.

Smoking weed has been effectively decriminalized. The famous "B.C. bud," rivaled in potency only by California's finest, is puffed so widely and openly that the city has earned the nickname "Vansterdam." A single block in the Downtown East Side hosts several pot seed wholesalers, the headquarters of the British Columbia Marijuana Party and the toking-allowed New Amsterdam Caf. ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/105087/vancouver%27s_radical_approach_to_drugs%3A_let_junkies_be_junkies_/

[Clintonista2]

1. Another illustration of why the left is right and the right is wrong

The right refuses to acknowledge reality. People are *always* going to do drugs. You can certainly encourage them to stop, but you must ensure that they are at least safe when they do it. Same thing with safe sex. The right wing thinks that if you teach kids that an angel dies every time you have sex, all teens will stop. Just like that.

[marmar]

2. Exactly.....

Abstinence-only.....War on Drugs.....Greeted as liberators....

Fantasy-based Reich wing government

[Downtown Hound]

3. Switzerland has been doing this since the 90's

and lo and behold, the country hasn't fallen into chaos. People still go to work and gasp, not everyone became a drug addict either! The program in fact, worked very well. Who'd have thought? :sarcasm:

[crispini]

4. Good article. Thanks! nt