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_

[BrklynLiberal]

1. I remember seeing a documentary a while back about a woman in England who was

a heroin addict. She would go to a place and get her supply. She had a job and an apartment..and aside from being a heroin addict had a "normal" life. She did not have to rob or prostitute herself to get money for her drugs.

[Systematic Chaos]

2. I saw that too.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't that program also offer free help for those who decided it was time to quit?

But nah, it's much better to have non-violent "drug offenders" rot in prison making a quarter an hour, toiling for some fuckwit corporation.

:grr::nuke::grr:

[BrklynLiberal]

3. Yes. You are right.

[Why Syzygy]

4. If drug use were a religion,

it would be tax exempt and free from most law hassles. It makes more sense than what actually passes for religion.