Pubdate: Fri, 02 Dec 2005
Source: Victoria Times-Colonist (CN BC)
Copyright: 2005 Times Colonist
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/481
Author: Jody Paterson
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment)

COMPULSORY TREATMENT SHOULDN'T BE THE FIRST CHOICE

Everything old is new again sooner or later, as years in the news 
business have taught me. So it's no surprise to see stories about 
compulsory treatment for drug addicts making headlines again. With 
almost 30 years gone since B.C. last gave compulsory treatment a try, 
you just had to know the issue was due for a resurgence.

I have an acquaintance with both personal and professional experience 
with addiction. Years ago in an interview, he regaled me with tales 
of the unimaginably creative things people with addictions dreamed up 
to get drugs into the places they were held in the years when B.C. 
locked up addicts and forced them through treatment.

The best story involved details that are perhaps too lewd to go into 
in a nice family newspaper, but suffice to say that it involved a 
female addict, a stolen salt and pepper shaker refitted for a highly 
unusual use, and somebody else's smuggled-in urine. Back in the late 
1970s when B.C. tested compulsory treatment, there was apparently no 
end to the innovative strategies employed by the desperately sick 
inmates of the province's addiction internment camps.

It didn't work then and it won't now, because getting at an addiction 
simply isn't as easy as locking up addicts until the drugs pass 
through their system. At its root, addiction is about broken hearts 
and shattered dreams, and lives that never quite worked out as they 
were supposed to. It's about seeking something in drugs that your 
troubled life just can't deliver on, and with a genetic 
predisposition to boot. A few months toughing it out in drug jail 
can't change much about that.

Hopelessness of effort aside, what might it be like to have 
compulsory treatment for B.C.'s addicted population? First off, don't 
count on any level of government to embrace the concept, because the 
first thing that would be needed would be an enormous outlay of cash 
to build thousands more treatment beds. Probably tens of thousands.

The cost would be staggering, to the point that the whole idea would 
never get any farther than the first gigantic gasp of horror from 
taxpayers. It's a bit like the raw-sewage issue here in Victoria: We 
like the theory of doing something about the problem, but can't bear 
to contemplate the cost. I doubt more than a single treatment centre 
would get built without the government responsible being swept from 
power at the first opportunity on a tide of angry public opinion.

And if that daunting problem could somehow be overcome, then the 
rowdy zoning hearings would almost certainly finish off the plan. 
Neighbours of future internment camps for addicts could be counted on 
to go absolutely hysterical. Whole groups would spring up solely to 
combat attempts to build a compulsory treatment centre in a specific 
neighbourhood. Strange alliances would develop between those who 
hated compulsory treatment out of fear it would ruin their 
neighbourhood, and those who hated it because of the pointlessness 
and inhumanity of forced treatment.

There would be no outskirts in any town that were far out enough to 
stop unhappy property owners from rallying against whatever political 
party dared to bring a compulsory treatment facility to their 
community. Everyone living near a potential site would instantly 
imagine desperate addicts breaking out of "jail," only to break into 
their houses moments later seeking money to ease their sickness and 
pain. And they'd probably be right.

Any politician who hadn't retreated on the issue during the initial 
furore over costs would at this point abandon ship no matter what, 
because nobody can risk hysterical neighbourhood associations and 
human-rights groups fomenting rebellion. Whatever British Columbians 
might think about compulsory treatment, the issue is a non-starter 
politically in our province.

Is that it, then? Not at all. At the heart of the debate over 
compulsory treatment is a belief that some people need significant 
help in getting over their addiction, and that's a thought we need to 
build on. B.C. currently has several thousand addicts and almost no 
treatment, but the good news is that we don't have to break the bank 
just to see progress. Much could be done with little more than a 
network of small programs mixing housing and treatment, with stays 
long enough for people to put some of their bigger demons behind them.

B.C. doesn't need compulsory treatment, it just needs treatment. Why 
waste any time debating what to do with people who refuse treatment 
when we don't even provide treatment for the ones who want it?

Someday, when there's treatment on demand for anyone who needs it, it 
could turn out that we'll still need to have a conversation about 
treating some people against their will. If somebody refuses all 
services and becomes a public health risk, drastic measures could be needed.

But that's someday. First we need the services.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman