Pubdate: Thu, 28 Sep 2006
Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC)
Copyright: 2006 The Vancouver Sun
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vancouversun/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/477
Author: Pete McMartin
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment)

MLA WANTS TO SHIP ADDICTS TO A RURAL TOUGH-LOVE FACILITY

But The Italian Model He Advocates Has Drawn Serious Criticism

On Friday, at the Four Seasons Hotel, Vancouver Burrard MLA Lorne 
Mayencourt will address the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement 
Association about drug addiction.

He will talk about an Italian community by the name of San 
Patrignano. It is near Rimini on the Adriatic coast.

His talk is significant because San Patrignano is being championed in 
some quarters as an alternative to localized drug addiction therapy. 
They want the establishment of a large Riverview-like facility where 
addicts are sequestered away from the general populace and put to work.

This last January, Mayencourt visited San Patrignano and came away 
convinced that its brand of therapy would work here for our 
population of crystal meth addicts. San Patrignano, off in the 
Italian countryside, is considered the largest drug addiction 
therapeutic community in Europe, and Mayencourt, who said one 
university study found it had a 70-per-cent success rate, would like 
to see a similar institution established somewhere in the Fraser Valley.

That bucolic vision also happens to agree with that of urban 
prohibitionists who are angry at the prospect of drug addiction 
treatment centres and housing being built in city neighbourhoods, and 
who would prefer to see such facilities outside the city. 
(Mayencourt, by the way, said he did not subscribe solely to that 
view, and said such facilities, such as the 30-bed triage residence 
being built at Fraser and 41st, were needed.)

San Patrignano's approach is decidedly tough-love. At any one time, 
it can house on its grounds about 2,000 clients, and those grounds 
have boundaries that clients are expected to observe. Clients can 
sometimes be there three or four years in recovery.

It operates on donations and on the profit from the sale of goods the 
community produces. Clients of San Patrignano are put to work when 
they get there, the idea being that learning trades and crafts not 
only acts as therapy but provides addicts with employable skills when 
they reintegrate into society.

(It is also strictly for drug addicts. It does not accept alcoholics, 
the mentally ill or dual-diagnosed patients -- those with both a 
mental illness and an addiction.)

San Patrignano, however, did have its critics.

One was Dr. Giancarlo Arnao, who, before his death in 2000, was 
president of the International Anti-Prohibitionist League, and a 
physician with over 30 years involvement in drug policy research.

In an essay entitled Drug Policy and Ideology, Arnao wrote about San 
Patrignano's tough-love methods and of its charismatic founder, 
Vincenzo Muccioli.

"The enormous popularity of Muccioli," Arnao wrote, "was fully 
displayed in 1984, when he was tried for putting some addicts in chains."

He was acquitted. But there was more. In April, 1989, according to 
Arnao, the corpse of a San Patrignano client, Roberto Maranzano, was 
found in a garbage disposal bin near Naples, 600 kilometres from San 
Patrignano. His death was attributed to a drug deal.

"But four years later," wrote Arnao, "some former inmates of the 
community confessed that Mr. Maranzano had been killed in a 
punishment section of the community by another inmate, a 'guard'; the 
victim had been tortured and beaten to death for two days, and his 
corpse was carried away in a community-owned car; moreover, the 
medical examiner stated that Mr. Maranzano had been injected with 
heroin while he was still alive. Mr. Muccioli initially pretended to 
ignore the fact, then he admitted that he knew about the crime, but 
he didn't inform the police because he didn't want to scare the 
inmates of the community."

In October, 1994, Arnao wrote, Muccioli was tried for the murder of 
Maranzano. He was acquitted. But:

"During the trial many San Patrignano inmates or former inmates 
testified that the Community was ruled with a high level of violence 
. . . In November, 1994, Muccioli was found not guilty of murder but 
guilty of complicity in hiding the corpse of Maranzano, and was given 
a light suspended sentence of eight months in jail."

Muccioli died in 1995 but his philosophy endured. His approach was 
popular with the public. The government embraced the model, and San 
Patrignano thrived and expanded.

Did Mayencourt know about the Arnao essay and the disturbing events 
it described?

Yes, he said, he had read it.

"[The events Arnao described are] not something I endorse or like, or 
anything like that. But I also thought it was important to see, does 
[San Patrignano] work? And it does."

He also said he had seen no evidence of coercion or questionable 
practices during his visit there. Italians, he said, speak glowingly 
of it. So did Mayencourt, who said he believed addicts would respond 
best to treatment away from the distractions of the city.

On the other hand, you have the cautionary voice of Arnao, who would 
warn us to consider not only the addicted but the dangers inherent in 
their treatment. And given the present frustration in Vancouver on 
the subject of drugs, the homeless et al, I had to wonder how a local 
version of a San Patrignano -- with its removal of addicts to the 
countryside -- would really be seen here.

As therapy, or street-cleaning?

And does it matter anymore?
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman