Pubdate: Thu, 26 Apr 2001
Source: Georgia Straight, The (CN BC)
Copyright: 2001 The Georgia Straight
Contact:  http://www2.mybc.com/aroundtown/straight/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1084
Authors: Axel Biehl, Michael Anderson, Dean McLean

ON ADDICTION, DISABILITY, AND CARNEGIE

As someone who has experienced addiction in the form of a protracted battle 
with alcohol, I take strong exception to the remark by Coun. Sam Sullivan 
in your April 19-26 issue [Straight Talk]: "You don't treat drug addicts by 
curing them any more than you treat quadriplegics by making them walk. 
You've got to help them manage their disability."

Not only is this a profound insult to quadriplegics and others who are 
permanently disabled through no fault of their own, but also to the 
countless drug addicts and alcoholics who have cured themselves by simply 
quitting.

Sullivan's attitude points up the fundamental wrong-headedness of the 
"harm-reduction" ethos, which absolves addicts by labelling them as victims 
of a "disability" rather than recognizing addiction for what it is: a 
choice for which the addict is responsible and which only the addict has 
the ability to change.

Axel Biehl Vancouver

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ON ADDICTION, DISABILITY, AND CARNEGIE

According to John Turvey, as well as the B.C. Human Rights Commission, drug 
addiction is now to be regarded as a disability ["Carnegie Nailed With 
Human-Rights Claim", April 12-19]. In other words, the addict has no more 
choice at any point in the process of addiction than someone with a birth 
defect, paraplegia, or schizophrenia. Please explain to a poor benighted 
fool (who has flirted with addiction himself) who isn't able to make that 
semantic leap-and be sure to spread the word among all the organizations 
for the disabled.

Turvey, you are an ass-head. While 35,000 people a day worldwide starve to 
death, you spend your energy trying to punish the last island of 
civilization in the Downtown Eastside because they don't like having 
junkies wandering in and out of the premises. Are you going to follow up on 
this latest idiocy and suggest that nobody has the right to prevent anyone 
from entering their homes or places of business? Leave the Carnegie alone. 
It will close when they finally realize what a sad joke it has become: an 
open-air mart and pissing wall for hypes that everyone else is terrified to 
come near.

Michael Anderson

Vancouver

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ON ADDICTION, DISABILITY, AND CARNEGIE

As a resident of the Downtown Eastside, I am  becoming sick of the 
pandering John Turvey and like-minded organizations are giving to the 
junkies down here. I am sick of hearing  "up", "down", "rock", "powder" 
every time I leave my front door. I am sick of junkies using the back lanes 
around my home as an open-air toilet/trick pad/shooting gallery. I am sick 
of having friends' and neighbours' cars and homes broken into. I am sick of 
the police brass caving in to special-interest groups, and I am sick of 
people like Turvey abusing the human-rights legislation to further their 
own agenda. If the people of B.C. knew the true scope of the financial 
black hole that is harm reduction in the Downtown Eastside, I wonder what 
they would say.

Dean McLean

Vancouver
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