Pubdate: Tue, 10 Oct 2006 Source: Nanaimo News Bulletin (CN BC) Copyright: 2006, BC Newspaper Group Contact: http://www.nanaimobulletin.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/948 Author: Darrell Bellaart STUDENT NURSES TACKLE ADDICTION STEREOTYPES Some Addicts Get More Respect Than Others. No one blinks at the coffee drinker who can't function without his morning of cup of java, but there's little patience for the junkie in the throes of cold turkey. Even health care professionals look down on addicts, often leaving them feeling trapped in a hopeless cycle of addiction. "If someone had a sex or alcohol addiction, we don't throw them in jail," said Dawn Doiron, a fourth-year nursing student at Malaspina University-College. She's one of a dozen nursing students involved in Faces of Addiction, which hopes to raise community awareness of addiction issues, while improving access to services for addicts. "A person has to chose to use drugs or not use them, but no one chooses to be addicted. Addicts are not just low-lifes or prostitutes - - it could be someone living in the north end," said Doiron. A goal of the Faces of Addiction project is to tear down some of the stereotypes surrounding drug addiction, and encourage harm-reduction in favour of the "war on drugs" approach. "In our profession we're trying to raise awareness about the language around addiction," says Sharon Gerhart, another member. "One nursing student came in and says, who's my client, and she finds out it's an addict, and there's a stigma around that. We're always stigmatizing the person. "So our awareness is about how to change how we view a person with an addiction." Faces of Addiction was formed in 2005. When this year's crop of nursing students took it over its members wanted to start a supervised injection site in Nanaimo, but the students soon realized this community isn't ready for that. "People say you're condoning it," Doiron said. "We say no, they're going to do it anyways, so if you can stop the spread of hepatitis and HIV ..." "It's so hard for people to get their head around that concept. It's, they're bad people, they're sinners." Members plan to raise some of those issues today with the screening of the documentary, The Fix: the Story of an Addicted City filmed in 2002 in East Vancouver. It shows at MalU Building 180, room 134, at 2:30 p.m. A panel will lead discussion afterward, and organizers hope the film sparks some lively debate. "Some of the students coming down are in criminology, and it will be interesting to see how it unfolds, just to see some of the biases," Doiron said. "It's going to be interesting." - --- MAP posted-by: Elaine