Dear Editor: Wallace G. Craig's article Insite Should be Closed Now (North Shore News, June 13) perpetuates the war on drugs. Obviously he has never spent much time with a drug addict and has no idea how painful, embarrassing and difficult drug addiction is. Most drug addiction is not about choice -- about two per cent of the population will always be drug addicts. This is a medical issue, not a legal one. Addicts are sick people and whether they live in the Downtown Eastside or in West Vancouver, they all deserve medical care. [continues 136 words]
Dear Editor: The Mailbox and Opinion pages in your June 20 issue were fascinating - -- three letters and Jerry Paradis' Bench Press devoted to illegal drug issues. One letter opposed drug legalization, the other two letters and Jerry Paradis argued for changes in dealing with drug issues. I wonder if this proportion is representative of society in general which seems to be becoming much more tolerant and supportive of change. Billions of dollars flow through the drug trade with the profits accruing to organized and unorganized crime. Billions more are spent on various levels of enforcement. My frustration as a taxpayer is that I help fund all this and receive no demonstrable benefits in return. I would love to see my tax dollars going to something useful like, well, dealing with the effects of drugs -- but in a decriminalized environment. We do that currently with alcohol and tobacco, arguably two worse drugs than the many currently illegal ones. [continues 71 words]
THE revelation this week that stories of candy-flavoured crystal meth are almost certainly false should serve as a cautionary tale not only for the public, but also for the media. Tales of the deadly drug supposedly marketed directly to children spread like wildfire in recent months. While nervous citizens are in part to blame, the flames were fanned in large part by the press, who were all too eager to report it. The phenomenon points to a persistent flaw in the media's approach to crime. In our pursuit of the cathartic - especially of stories that invoke anger or outrage - we focus on the dark side of society to the point of misrepresenting it. [continues 147 words]
Local Police Say No Evidence Of Candy-Flavoured Drug On N. Shore Despite persistent rumours, the appearance of candy-flavoured crystal meth in North Shore schools is an urban myth, according to the North Vancouver RCMP. Warnings have been circulating for several months that dealers here have been adding strawberry, peanut butter, cola and other flavourings to the drug in an effort to hook young kids, and that the concoction has shown up in at least one school. But as far as the police can tell, the rumour is simply untrue, said the detachment in a release Wednesday. [continues 656 words]
IN handing a grow operator a conditional sentence last month, North Vancouver provincial judge Doug Moss expressed frustration the court could not do more to curb his activities. We share Moss's frustration, but we believe it is misdirected. Moss is right the system has little power to kill grow ops. But stiffer sentences would do nothing to help. Our 80-year war on drugs has shown this in abundance. Despite the endless resources we have poured into enforcement, the drug trade has thrived. Our efforts have driven up prices to the point it is among the most lucrative industries on the planet. [continues 158 words]
Dear Editor: I sent a letter to you in response to an editorial - Insite Should be Closed Now - (North Shore News, June 10). In a misprint you have completely reversed the intent of my response (Heroin Should Never be Legal, North Shore News, June 20). I certainly do not wish anyone to believe that I support drug prohibition of any sort, for Parliament has not yet informed me why they prefer their citizens access dirty street drugs instead of clean regulated drugs; why Parliament prefers to put their own citizens in jail instead of giving them access to health care, food and shelter as free men; or why Parliament chooses to subsidize organized crime and make drugs easier for our children to access than even a decent education. Black Creek (North Shore News Editor: The word "legal" in the letter should have been "illegal.") [end]
Dear Editor: For the homeless people on the North Shore, it would simply not be enough to build a second shelter, or to add more beds. What we urgently need is a detox centre and the medical facilities that deal with the addictions. Our one shelter cannot deal with drug abusers. Our three North Shore municipalities must press the provincial and federal governments to step in and show their calibre in addressing this dire situation. We have homeless squats all around us, and it will only get worse if no action is taken to help these people. They need to have a decent life, because we are all entitled to a safe roof over our heads. Margaret Dean North Vancouver [end]
A North Vancouver judge told a 24-year-old man who pleaded guilty to running a West Vancouver grow op that he'd like to send him to jail, but felt compelled by higher court rulings to hand him a conditional sentence with house arrest instead. Judge Doug Moss of the North Vancouver provincial court made the comments - including his frustration over the courts' seeming inability to stem the growing problem of grow ops on the North Shore - - as he sentenced Warren William Spencer to a 12-month conditional sentence including six months of house arrest and electronic monitoring. [continues 344 words]
Dear Editor: Wallace G. Craig writes, "It would be an act of professional negligence and criminal malpractice for a doctor to assist a patient to inject an illicit drug." (Insite Should be Closed Now, North Shore News, June 13). He is right, and that is precisely why heroin should not be legal. Noreen Evers Black Creek [end]
Dear Editor: Op-ed pieces by their nature reflect their writers' opinions and as such do not need to be factually based. I would however like the opportunity to respond to Wallace Craig's column June 13 with the best available evidence from medicine and health care, and leave it up to your readers to differentiate fact from ideology. Whether Craig likes it or not, harm reduction interventions such as substitution therapies, needle exchanges and supervised injection sites are recognized internationally as effective ways of improving the health of people with addictions. Craig may know better than (among many others) the U.S. Institutes of Medicine, the World Health Organization and the B.C. Centre of Excellence in HIV/AIDS, but these are among my sources for citing these interventions as reducing risk, engaging drug users, improving health and often leading injection drug users to drug-free lives. If I am a "pure trickster" and a "cunning deceiver" as Craig would have it, then so by extension are they and the thousands of physicians, nurses and therapists who daily, far from seeking to launder addiction out of human agency, are working with scientifically validated interventions to manage an exceedingly difficult and complicated health problem. [continues 99 words]
Dear Editor: Wallace G. Craig presents as one of the old guard, disgusted with or intolerant of addicts (Insite Should be Closed Now, North Shore News, June 13). His line of claptrap is straight out of the 19th century; minds closed tight and bereft of all thoughts of progress or innovation. New ideas and new programs are what is needed to confront the problems with society, not reactionary, mindless censoring and sweeping the problem under the rug of the judicial system. [continues 435 words]
UNDER the red-herring rubric of "public health practice and a balanced four-pillar approach to drug policy," Provincial Health Officer Perry Kendall claims that "methadone maintenance, needle exchanges and supervised injection sites have proven to reduce the risk for HIV and to engage vulnerable individuals in health and social services." Kendall made this high-ground claim in a letter to the editor of the National Post published May 30. The phrase "proven to reduce the risk for HIV and to engage vulnerable individuals in health and social services" is pure tricksterism, a cunning deception impregnated with the sperm of misinformation. [continues 1048 words]
The winners of a youth poster contest intended to discourage the use of crystal methamphetamine have been announced. Representatives of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation announced the winners in a written statement May 7. Posters were required to contain original traditional or contemporary aboriginal content in any medium and contain an anti-meth phrase. Aboriginal youth attending schools in North Vancouver were invited to participate in the contest. All three winners attend Windsor secondary. The first place entry was described by contest organizers in the statement as a "chilling picture of a young person sitting on the street smoking meth, with a rap written down the right side column, ending with the lines, 'Hoping and praying for death, with my last breath, I have to ask: Life or meth?'" [continues 129 words]
Dear Editor: In your editorial (Bring 'Em Home, April 25) you suggested Canada could do more for Afghanistan's economy and defeat the Taliban if we led a global fight to legalize the production of heroin and opium and control their distribution. Last year Afghanistan produced 90 per cent of the world's opium. That's a pretty good market share. The Americans have a war on drugs. It hasn't been successful, but they do spend billions on it and our "fight" against it would definitely get their attention. They won't invade us, but we would certainly risk a painful economic thrashing. Just so Afghanistan can increase its opium production by 10 per cent? Like most Canadians I am skeptical of our presence in Afghanistan, but legalizing opium, if that were to bring out violence in the elephant next door, does not strike me as a helpful solution. Garrett Polman West Vancouver [end]
A North Vancouver woman whose horticultural talents included running a full-scale marijuana grow op has had her Alder Street home seized by authorities following a B.C. Court of Appeal decision that found the government had a right to the property because it had been used for her crime. A decision handed down by a panel of three Appeal Court judges Tuesday upheld the Crown's right to the North Vancouver home owned by Judy Ann Craig, who pleaded guilty almost two years ago to production of a controlled substance after police busted a large grow op in her home. [continues 646 words]
In the good old days, the phrase "organized crime" meant something. The Godfather. John Gotti. Certainly something to do with the "mob," the romanticized tableau of punks in shiny suits and loads of bling, with cute names like Joe Bananas, whacking each other. But it's a safe bet that no one would have thought that kids recruited into street gangs were participating in organized crime, as was suggested recently in Abbotsford. For almost all of us, "organized crime" means a widespread, amorphous, high-stakes criminal enterprise that operates mostly in secrecy and maintains a rigid hierarchy. [continues 1003 words]
On Jan. 19, the B.C. Court of Appeal overturned a sentence imposed in a marijuana grow-op case. A provincial court judge had found that a $20,000 fine would best address the root of the offence: the prospect of huge profits in a black market. The Court of Appeal thought differently and sentenced the accused to a year in jail. The three-judge panel concluded that the fine did not properly meet two principles of sentencing: denunciation of the unlawful conduct and deterrence of others. [continues 920 words]
A man who got so sick of drug deals going on upstairs in his landlady's house that he fired off a gun as a warning sign got a conditional discharge Thursday from a sympathetic judge who said the public is "pretty sick" of dealers and other petty criminals. "Last night I saw a bunch of guys tipping over stuff and running down the street. I could have used you," Judge William Diebolt told 27-year-old Sennen Joseph of West Vancouver. "I have a really hard time giving you a criminal record." [continues 260 words]
TWO reports released this week on Canada's drug strategy underscore the pointlessness of Ottawa's promise to get tough on drugs. A poll of nearly 3,000 Canadians, published Tuesday, has shown that two-thirds of us would like to see greater emphasis on treatment and prevention. This comes just a day after the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, an agency funded partly by the province, concluded that close to three-quarters of federal funding intended to combat the problem goes toward enforcement. The Conservatives have recently promised to increase that commitment. [continues 143 words]
THE RCMP's decision to weigh in with an internal report criticizing Vancouver's supervised injection site is an indication that more work is needed - not so much on the injection site itself but on long-held beliefs about drug use. Produced this summer when the Harper government was considering Insite's licence, the report voices the opinion that anything that lowers the perceived risk of drug use is bad, because it could encourage both addicts and potential new drug users, who no longer have to worry about overdosing or contracting HIV/AIDS. [continues 151 words]
