Pubdate: Sun, 17 Jun 2007 Source: Chronicle Herald (CN NS) Copyright: 2007 The Halifax Herald Limited Contact: http://thechronicleherald.ca/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/180 Author: Silver Donald Cameron PARKING METER MISCHIEF YET ANOTHER SIGN OF DUMB DRUG LAWS OUT IN FRONT of J.T.'s office are four parking meters with their heads clipped off. No need to fumble for coins -- the parking is free. And the amusing thing, says J.T., is that the decapitated meters are just two blocks from the main police station. J.T., whoever he is, was commenting on a Globe and Mail account of a rash of assaults on parking meters in Victoria, where he lives. The city has 1,900 meters, and in the past year nearly 500 have been damaged or stolen. Currently 200 meters are out of commission. The baddies pry off the heads with crowbars or cut them off with hacksaws. A more sophisticated (and prosperous) thief stole one meter, filed down a key until it fit the lock, and then went around the neighbourhood using his key to open and empty dozens of other meters. The perpetrators are drug addicts, about 12 to 18 of them, and the cops know exactly who they are. Stopping them, however, is another matter. Six have been arrested, convicted of theft under $5,000, and released back to the street, where they picked up their crowbars and hacksaws again. Two aspects of this story caught my attention. First, it provides the first glimpse I've ever had of the economics of parking -- though I did know that one of the world's largest manufacturers of parking meters is right here in Nova Scotia: Mackay Meters of New Glasgow, which just got an order from New York City for 30,000 meters. How much money do parking meters take in? Well, Victoria's 1,900 meters pull in about $4,000 a day, or $2.10 per meter. Assuming the weekend take is minimal, that works out to about $10 per five-day week, or $520 a year. A parking meter costs $730, so a return of $520 represents a whopping 71 per cent. Victoria's 1,900 meters, which would cost about $1.4 million to buy, must gross nearly a million dollars annually. A nice little business, but the bandits are denting it badly. Fixing or replacing 500 meters would cost about $345,000. That's roughly a third of the annual income. And if 200 are out of service at any one time, the revenue drops by about 10 per cent, or $100,000 a year. The solution says Mayor Alan Lowe, is "pay and display" machines, heavily built of stainless steel and titanium, which allow motorists to pre-pay, using a credit card if they wish and leaving a receipt on their dashboard. But the city would need about 300 such machines, at $15,000 to $20,000 a throw, totalling $5 million. A million-dollar return on that investment is only about 20 per cent -- and that's before maintenance, administration, collection and enforcement. All of which leads some citizens to say, Why not abolish the meters? If the objective is to regulate parking rather than to make money, why endure all these complications for a minimal reward? Why not just use time limits, and enforce them vigorously? What a lovely thought. What a noble blow in favour of simplifying our lives. The second striking aspect of the story is its demonstration, yet again, of the deplorable effects of our foolish drug laws, which are the driving force behind these and many other minor crimes. When will we grasp that denouncing and forbidding simply doesn't work? Yes, many of the ravaged souls who become addicted are thoroughly difficult people. Yes, the use of drugs is undesirable. But we are not living in a world populated by Boy Scouts and angels. People will use drugs no matter how hard we frown. I personally favour alcohol, a treacherous drug which has fortunately been decriminalized. By closing off all legal sources of supply for other drugs we simply ensure that a very lucrative business will remain in the hands of thugs and predators both here and abroad. We also ensure that the price to addicts will be high, and the quality uncertain. The high prices create billows of secondary crime, as desperate addicts snatch whatever they can in order to pay whatever the criminals demand. There are better ways, as shown by the Dutch and the Swiss, whose policies are based on the concept of harm reduction. Broadly speaking, their policies have three aims: to decrease the use of drugs and of drug dependency; to help users overcome their addiction; and to improve the living conditions and health of users and addicts and to maintain their integration in society -- for example, by providing heroin addicts with maintenance doses of heroin or methadone. In both countries, the sale and use of marijuana is technically illegal, but, as is often the case in Canada, the authorities simply ignore it. Both countries still have drug problems, but the problems have become manageable, and they are being managed. And nobody in either country is beheading the local parking meters. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom