A COMPREHENSIVE PLAN TO FIGHT THE DRUG PLAGUE

Not everyone will approve of the plan being released today by the City of
Vancouver to deal with illicit drugs, indisputably Vancouver's most
intractable problem.

To implement the plan will take gargantuan effort. Parts of it will be
vehemently opposed. But neither the difficulties it will face nor the
controversy it will foster should be used as an excuse for inaction, or a
panacea for yet more of the half-measures we've seen in the past.

"A Framework for Action, A Four Pillar Approach to Drug Problems in
Vancouver," is imperfect, perhaps unavoidably so. But in the world of
realpoltik, it's a remarkable achievement for the degree to which it is
innovative and because of the long list of stakeholders who helped shape
it. These range from the B.C. chief coroner's office and several provincial
ministries and agencies to the Coalition for Crime Prevention and Drug
Treatment, an umbrella group composed of agencies from the Vancouver Hotel
Association to the Boys and Girls Club.

"Framework" is a complex, well researched, and in many ways innovative call
to arms. Its premise is treatment for addiction and the enforcement of
criminal laws.

What's not to like about such commendable objectives? On the surface,
nothing. But, as writer David Beers points out in Saturday's launch of The
Sun's series on drugs and the Downtown Eastside, in this controversial area
even the most sober policy question raises many more.

The result of so many questions is often confusion. The answers have seemed
to lie within a crazy house of mirrors, each reflecting off the others, so
the view of reality becomes infinitely distorted. The result has been
paralysis or narrow efforts to deal with one question at a time, so now we
have as many as 100 agencies thrashing about in the same neighbourhood to
address a problem beyond the scope of any of them.

Meanwhile, the city's drug toll worsens. Since 1993, there have been an
average of 147 deaths a year. There are untold hundreds of new cases of
disease like HIV or hepatitis C, and a citywide fear of drug crimes. The
neighbourhood, known by its acronym of DES, has come to be viewed as a disease.

We hope that "Framework" can point to more practical solutions for the
Downtown Eastside. It identifies four goals, and outlines four "pillars" of
action to achieve them.

The first goal, which the plan calls overarching and key to the others, is
to "persuade other levels of government to take action and responsibility."
Funding and changes in drug laws must come from Victoria and Ottawa, and
without these things Vancouver can do little to address the problem. The
other goals cascade from the first: restoration of public order, addressing
the health crisis by reducing harm to communities and individuals, and
establishing a single accountable agent to coordinate actions in the framework.

The first three so-called pillars will likely be acceptable to most:

- - Prevention through education and awareness.

- - Treatment of addicts through intervention and support.

- - Enforcement to increase public order and close the open drug scene in the
Downtown Eastside.

The fourth pillar, harm reduction, has aspects that will be controversial,
especially since the plan accepts that some people will remain addicted and
proposes helping them to remain healthy while they are.

The plan is expected to cost as much as $30 million. It's a hefty price
tag, but cheap compared to the $96 million annual cost of drug problems in
Vancouver now.

However, the price tag is where we do raise one concern. While Vancouver
rightly calls on Victoria and Ottawa for action and money to support the
plan, the city hasn't committed a cent of its own. We think Vancouver
should show its sincerity and ante up some dough.

But overall, the framework is an intelligent, exhaustively researched plan
that shows real promise of improving the dreadful woes of the Downtown
Eastside. It's a step forward and away from the mayhem drugs have wrought
among us.