Pubdate: Wed, 31 May 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: Jonathan Baker CITY HALL PUSHES HARM INTENSIFICATION Re: McTreatment won't meet needs of addicts, Sound-off, May 30 Cheryl Savchenko has hit the nail, if not City Hall, on the head. Thirty years ago it was generally thought that substandard housing was the markets' response to substandard incomes. Today, such housing is the market's response to an exponentially increasing number of addicts in a society that has closed down the institutions that provided medical services to people with serious mental health issues. City Hall is planning to open its own franchise of addiction squats throughout Vancouver. The next one will be built at 16th and Dunbar, modelled on the prototype foisted on enraged residents on Fraser Street. There is no science or effective therapy behind these places. In the bureaucratic newspeak of City Hall reports, these places are said to provide "addiction program services" (meaning they have a desk clerk) in an "abstinence-based environment" (meaning they shoot up off-site where the kids play in the park). There cannot be effective services in a neighbourhood squat setting. The city has thus embarked on a program of harm intensification. If allowed to continue, this policy will some day be seen as the most inept social planning decision any government has ever made. Addicts support their addiction by crime. The odds favour recidivism. As Mark Twain said of smoking, "I can give it up anytime I want. I have done it a thousand times." To establish government-run addict hotels throughout the city in residential neighbourhoods is like treating cancer by causing it to metastasize. Jonathan Baker Vancouver - --- MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman