Pubdate: June 16, 1999 Source: Victoria Times-Colonist (Canada) Contact: Jody Paterson HEROIN CRISIS IS OUR OWN CREATION We have fought it, forbidden it, demonized it and left its users to die. And now we'd better deal with it, because heroin isn't going away. The form that the "heroin problem" takes in B.C. these days is a death a day from overdose, an epidemic of HIV/AIDS and hepatitis, hospital emergency rooms clogged with homeless addicts in varying stages of lousy health, almost 800 charges a year of trafficking and possession creeping through the justice system, and a whole lot of misery. All told, $95 million a year in direct costs. Quite a mess. But as more sensible sorts have been pointing out for the better part of a century, our cures are worse than the disease, A heroin addiction will most definitely eat up all your money and ruin your life. But there's nothing inherent in the drug itself that does it - in fact, research studies and clinical trials over the years have found that given adequate food, housing and heroin, an addict suffers neither physical nor mental deterioration even after years of use. But by targeting it as the consummate depravity, we've created a monster. Heroin spawns crime, homelessness, sickness and death because we've made it that way. Heroin is created by heating morphine, the active ingredient in opium, with an acetic acid such as vinegar. It converts back to morphine in the body. Back in the 1880s when opiates were not only legal in the U.S. and Canada but widely available - Iowa had 3,000 grocery stores selling them in those years - heroin was a popular drug among the educated upper class and used for any number of maladies, even as a treatment for alcoholism. The issue that first got the authorities riled up was race, not drug use. The white folk were mingling just a little too readily with the Chinese railway labourers in the opium dens, and criminalizing opium and its derivatives seemed like the easiest way to stop any interracial friendships. And so it began. Over time, society grew to see the heroin addict as morally weal and despicable, never questioning such hypocrisy in an era when all sorts of other addictive and dangerous drugs were being trafficked via the liquor stores and prescription pads of the nation. We continue to relegate addicts to the fringe, writing them off as sickly losers and criminals. But if they're sick, it's because a heroin habit of $100 a day leaves little for personal care. If they're losers, it's because we deny them their jobs, rights and dignity. It they're criminals, it's because they steal to afford the black-market prices created by heroin's illegality. Meanwhile, the very real problem being enslaved - to heroin or anything else - goes all but unaddressed. There are 15,000 regular users in B.C., but only 18 treatment beds for all of the capital region and much of the Island, and 200 for Vancouver. The wait list is 50 people deep. Worse, the relapse rates are tremendously high; some studies put them at 95 per cent. Regular heroin use most definitely leads to a lifetime of addiction, and our kids need to hear that. But convincing them will take facts, not scare tactics. Heroin use has not been eradicated by 100 years of police crackdowns and moral outrage. In fact, it's thriving: Victoria Street Outreach Services coordinator Claire Dineen collected 111,000 used needles in her first year with the needle exchange back in 1994-95; in the last fiscal year, she collected three times that. We can tell ourselves that we just need a little more time, a few more police. Or we can save lives and money and do it right, before another century slips away. - --- MAP posted-by: Derek Rea