Pubdate: Tue, 24 Sep 2002
Source: Business In Vancouver (CN BC)
Copyright: 2002 BIV Publications Ltd.
Contact:  http://www.biv.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2458
Author: Peter Ladner

STATUS QUO WILL NOT SOLVE VANCOUVER'S DRUG PROBLEM

With drug-driven property crime at or near the top of every list of 
business concerns in the Lower Mainland, it was amazing to hear the experts 
at a recent drug policy seminar all pointing to the same solutions.

Equally amazing is the fierce resistance in some quarters to adopting those 
solutions, because they require us to change our thinking about controlling 
drug abuse. The only thing worse than some of these solutions is the status 
quo. Based on what I heard at the Saving Money, Saving Lives conference 
last week at Simon Fraser University, here are some things the business 
community can do.

First, trust the Vancouver Agreement, which lays down a multi-government 
plan of action built around the so-called four pillars of prevention, harm 
reduction, treatment and enforcement. The answers and action plans have all 
been ratified by virtually every major social and educational institution 
in town, along with many business organizations. Understand the business 
case for spending on prevention, treatment and harm reduction as well as 
enforcement.

Respect the experience of Inspector Kash Heed from the vice and drugs 
division of the Vancouver Police Department, who said, "We cannot arrest 
our way out of the drug problem."

Look at the estimated $18 billion direct and indirect cost of illegal drug 
use in Canada and ask yourself if that's the result of a successful 
anti-drug strategy. Hear Patrick Basham's observation that most 
drug-related crime is actually prohibition-related crime. Basham is with 
the Cato Institute, having moved there from the Fraser Institute, where he 
led its discussions on legalizing drugs 
(oldfraser.lexi.net/publications/books/drug_papers).

"Ninety per cent of drug-related crime results, not from drug use, but from 
the illegality of drugs," he pointed out. "Prohibition has created a 
business environment in which there's nothing as profitable as smuggling 
and selling drugs."

Prohibition also causes addicts to take a gamble on dosage, quality and 
safety when they ingest. Every time they lose that gamble, society picks up 
the health costs. One out of three new HIV cases is drug-related. Every new 
HIV/AIDS patient drains an average of $150,000 in public spending.

Look at the criminal explosion that arose out of the failed North American 
experiment with alcohol prohibition and ask yourself what's different about 
the current crime wave driven by drug prohibition.

Recognize the difference between our instinctive reaction to this drug 
chaos and the practical realities. The instinctive reaction - on seeing the 
open drug market at Hastings and Main, the damage it's doing to businesses 
in the area, the threat it offers to our Olympic bid - is to say, as one 
developer did: "Just add 60 police officers to the neighbourhood and clean 
it up."

But do the math. At $100,000 total cost for every police officer, that's $6 
million a year to displace the problem and relocate it to other areas of 
the Lower Mainland. In those areas, other police resources will be added to 
displace it - back to the downtown area?

Then there's the immense cost of prosecution and ongoing incarceration. 
Even if we could lock up all the addicts, drug use is rampant in jails, 
from where the addicts will eventually emerge to resume breaking into cars 
and homes.

One place where business can contribute is in generating employment in the 
Downtown Eastside. Experienced business people are desperately needed to 
get employment going, but someone has to convince people hardened by years 
of dealing with unscrupulous slum landlords that just because business 
investors get something in their pockets, the community doesn't lose.

Someone has to do the missionary work with elements in that community who 
seem to have a perverse pride in having the poorest postal code in Canada, 
perhaps because they benefit from keeping it that way. The gospel has to be 
diversity. New residents who aren't desperate and strung out are good. 
Mixed neighbourhoods are healthy neighbourhoods. Homeowners mixed with 
renters are good. People with jobs, living in non-subsidized housing, add a 
mix that's essential for local shops and services to survive. That means 
looking at ways to upgrade the area without up-ending the community: 
somewhere between another SRO hotel and a high-end tower.

But of all the things business could do, the most powerful would be for 
Downtown Eastside property owners and merchants to lay down conditions 
under which they would accept a safe injection site. In one European city, 
they allowed one in on the condition that the neighbours could determine 
its future by a referendum after a year. (They voted overwhelmingly to keep 
it.) These sites have been proven to cut crime by 50 per cent. They 
extricate users from the grip of their pushers, and they do it without the 
"honey-pot" effect of attracting new users.

This is the most effective step that can be taken. It has the best chance 
of providing immediate, measurable desirable results, however much they're 
mixed with undesirable elements we wish we could eliminate but that we 
never will.