MOTHER'S SAD STORY REVEALS FAILURE OF GOV'T DRUG POLICY

Janice Blair is a Richmond mother of three who thinks Canada should permit
heroin prescriptions to addicts.

She also thinks it's about time Ottawa admitted its crime-based war on
drugs has failed. In her view, drugs such as heroin and marijuana should be
legalized.

Blair is not a political activist, nor does she promote the use of drugs.
But she is a realist whose devastating personal experience led her to these
conclusions.

The tragedy is that she now has only two children to share life with. Her
youngest, Stephen, died of a heroin overdose last year at the young age of 36.

Blair's sad story is one that many other families in British Columbia and
Canada could tell -- the families of the thousands of victims of drug
overdoses. They are the grief-stricken citizens who have suffered firsthand
the terrible consequences of government policies that criminalize sick
people rather than treat their illness.

In telling Stephen's story, his mother recalls him as a "nice, kind"
youngster who "had a real soft spot" and was well-liked by adults. He also
had personal demons to deal with from a very tender age.

Stephen was "bigger than other kids" and as a result was picked on in
school. Blair says he also sustained regular verbal abuse from her
alcoholic first husband, from whom she separated in 1978 when Stephen was 16.

When Blair and her husband split, their two sons lived with the father and,
with alcohol always around the house, Stephen began to drink. He soon quit
high school and between the lack of education and heavy drinking had
trouble finding work.

Blair says that when Stephen's father died in 1988, at age 52, "it really
hit my son hard because he was very emotional.

"He started to drink more, and then he got his inheritance, and I guess he
spent a lot of that on alcohol. He was depressed but he didn't tell me, and
he didn't seem to be able to go for help."

Stephen lived with his mother on and off and "for a time he was living with
a couple of roommates, and one of them was on heroin. The guy looked so
happy all the time and my son was depressed."

His drinking led to numerous brushes with the law and "then it kind of
stopped," Blair says, "but I didn't realize he had gone on to heroin."

The heroin addiction led to more trouble with the law as Stephen fenced
stolen goods to pay for his fix. He tried methadone but it didn't work.

For most of the '90s, Stephen fought a losing battle with addiction but
managed to repeatedly convince his family that he was just about to turn
the corner.

Blair got the dreaded phone call while vacationing in Las Vegas. On March
17, 1998, her youngest child fatally overdosed after locking himself in the
bathroom of a Richmond restaurant.

His mother told the story bravely but was shaken by the end of it. "Jail
doesn't work," she said, crying softly. "Addiction needs to be treated the
same as any other health problem . . . like diabetes."

When Stephen died, she gave up her realtor's job and now keeps in touch
with his friends, encouraging them to stay clean.

Blair thinks Stephen would be alive today if the government had a
heroin-prescription program similar to those now used with success in
England and Europe.

And she thinks legalization of drugs is the only way society can reduce the
criminal underpinnings of the drug trade. "What's happening now doesn't
work, just as prohibition didn't work."

The skeptics would understand, Blair adds, if "they were personally
affected as I've been. That would change them."