A PILLAR TOO FAR

Vancouver's New Drug Strategy Is Three-Quarters Right

Responding to what he has called an unprecedented drug crisis facing his
city yesterday, Philip Owen, the Mayor of Vancouver, released his much
anticipated drug strategy. This draft report envisions joint federal,
provincial and municipal action against the scourge of illegal drugs in
four areas: prevention, treatment, enforcement and harm reduction. But
while we agree the first three are essential components to tackling this
troubling issue, the fourth will simply undo the good done by the first three.

Previously this newspaper has argued in favour of decriminalizing
marijuana. Given the insignificance of major health or crime issues
associated with this drug, it makes sense to deal with marijuana use by
issuing fines and redirecting society's energies toward the much greater
dangers associated with hard drugs such as cocaine and heroin. And it is
these drugs that pose the problems in Vancouver.

The first three pillars of Mr. Owen's proposal -- prevention, treatment and
enforcement -- all share complementary objectives of curtailing the amount
of drug use and the number of drug users in Vancouver. Creating specialized
drug courts that funnel users into new treatment facilities, increasing the
number of uniformed police officers in the Downtown Eastside area and
refurbishing the notorious Main and Hastings intersection are all solid
plans of attack.

However, the policies suggested under harm reduction -- such as
safe-injection sites and free housing for users (as well as providing free
heroin to users, which is included as a treatment strategy) -- work in the
opposite direction. No government should be actively encouraging drug use
and the state-sanctioning of such personal abuse presents a major obstacle
in connecting addicts with treatment.

The notion that habitual drug use is a choice society should respect is
surprisingly prevalent and extremely dangerous. On Dec. 6, for instance,
the Vancouver Central Library will host a talk titled "Empowering the voice
of citizens who use illicit drugs." But free heroin, public injection sites
and self-esteem boosts for addicts will not reduce the problem. Rather
these policies will attract drug users from other parts of the province and
country, undermine the worthy objectives of the other three pillars and
threaten the effectiveness of Vancouver's entire drug strategy.