THE GOOD GUYS LOST THE WAR ON DRUGS

Drug addiction is a disease, not an indicator of the user's lack of moral
fibre. Sweeping it under the rug will not make it go away.

VICTORIA - While it is always unkind to look a gift horse in the mouth, the
recent federal promise to spend more money in British Columbia on drug and
alcohol abuse programs really has no teeth in it at all.

Health Minister Allan Rock is doing his thing as a potential federal Liberal
leadership candidate by putting up $3.2-million worth of Ottawa cash for
community programs here. David Anderson, the Victoria Liberal kingmaker is
delighted to be associated with the announcement. And certainly Premier Glen
Clark will not turn back the money even though he can rightly claim the feds
are intruding (again) on provincial turf.

In real perspective, the recently offered $3.2 million for B.C. -- even if
it all went directly to programs and not to bureaucrats (which is impossible
to believe) -- does not even come close to the street value of the last RCMP
drug bust.

The availability of street drugs in B.C. and across Canada is a national
scandal and attempts to mitigate the damage of this traffic by means of
picayune amounts of money released at photo-ops does not obviate government
responsibility.

The city of Victoria's clumsy attempt to sweep the problem under the rug by
declaring most of the downtown a "red zone" has failed to stand up in court,
leaving the streets as busy as ever with pimps, prostitutes and pushers.

Victoria has also cut service funding for street people in the general round
of budgetary fine-tuning that has occupied all governments in the past five
years.

The sad fact is that no one in public office anywhere in this country seems
to have the grit to stand up and say: We have to get at the root of the drug
problem, no matter what it costs.

The first thing such a leader would have to do is unbend the twisted public
mindset that attributes drug addiction to the individual user's lack of
moral fibre.

By any measurement, drug addiction is a disease, not some quasi-religious
malleability of backbone that only requires the individual to straighten up
and fly right.

The disease is permanent and dangerous. Just consider the unhappy lapse of
Victorian Stephen Reid, ex-convict and author, family man, clean of dope for
10 years and out of debt to society by way of years in the penitentiary.

Mr. Reid's relapse into drug-induced illness culminated in a frightening
bank robbery attempt and police shootout in the Cook Street Village, one of
Victoria's quietest neighbourhoods. These tabloid events had nothing to do
with the man's morality, or lack thereof. They were the predictable and
unhappy products of a mind clinically diseased by drug abuse.

All credible clinicians and scientists agree on treatment. Only careful and
long-term detoxification can suppress --not cure -- drug addiction. Even the
best treatments can claim only something like a 25-per-cent success rate on
the first go-round with a deeply addicted person.

In Mr. Reid's case, at his age and with his record, there is no alternative
but to face the charges and hope, somehow, that there is room for him in the
justice system. But how does this speak to the young, to those next in line
to experience the whirling gyre where the centre never holds?

Once again, the record is not helpful. The recently-reported experiences of
Ken and Linda Barton should give all British Columbians pause to consider
what their governments are really doing about drug addiction.

In order to save their teen-aged addict son from further damage in a
drug-blighted life, Mr. and Mrs. Barton sold their White Rock home and moved
to Calgary where the boy was enrolled in the Alberta Adolescent Recovery Centre.

This is not what people have in mind when they say they are moving to
Alberta to get away from the New Democratic Party and Premier Clark's
economic mismanagement. The Alberta detox recovery program is not a medicare
program. The Bartons have paid with their economic lives for their son's
treatment. And they are not alone.

It should be evident to anyone with the observational powers of a banana
slug that $3.2 million of federal money spent on community drug and alcohol
centres in the next two years does not come close to the real problem.

They would be more honest if they admitted the war on drugs is over and the
good guys lost.

Patrick Nagle's column appears on Mondays.