(This column was published in the print edition of the North Shore News on Mar 26, 2003)
Junkies lobby against drug enforcement
By Leo Knight
A multitude of press releases are issued every day.
Among the ones I receive, some are written by a group you've actually heard of, but not many. Most breathlessly announce the appointment of so-and-so or the start of a new initiative to raise money for this cause or that one. And most are simply filled in that circular receptacle beside the desk.
But one caught my eye on the weekend as it was heading to the waste bin. Because it had the logos of the BC Persons with Aids Society, AIDS Vancouver and YouthCO Aids Society, I was about to ignore it until I noticed the phrase "drug cops" in the headline.
So I read it.
The document refers to a letter written to Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell and the police board. In the letter, these organizations state they are writing to "express our strong opposition to the redeployment of 50 police officers from various community police stations and duties to the Downtown Eastside, as well as to request the funding for an additional 44
new police officers, ostensibly for the purpose of bolstering the city's ongoing efforts to address the health and social programs affecting the Downtown Eastside."
The letter refers to something called VANDU, which I later discovered stands for the Vancouver Association of Network of Drug Users. No kidding. Junkies are now a special interest group (SIGs) in this nutty province. And they are being supported by a collection of other SIGs who milk the public teat just because they have the acronym A-I-D-S in their name, and
governments shovel money at them.
If I read the opening paragraph of the press release correctly, they want to eliminate or reduce one of the so-called "four pillars" of Mayor Campbell's drug strategy, enforcement, because the other three pillars are not yet fully in place. (The so-called four pillars are enforcement, education, harm reduction and treatment.)
Here's what it says: "Community AIDS organizations are united in their opposition to the funding of additional police as a strategy to address the ongoing drug problems on the Downtown Eastside without additional substantial resources for the other three pillars of the four pillar approach."
If I understand their logic correctly, because the (Larry) Campbell administration has yet to get all the "pillars" in place, we should knockout the only pillar standing and let the inmates run the asylum. The police should turn the streets over to the various crack dealers, heroin sellers, coke pushers, thieves, robbers, pimps and assorted other scumbags
because the mean-well-but-haven't-a-clue COPE council couldn't organize a two-man attack on an outhouse. Hell, why don't we just invite the Hells Angels and the Vietnamese gangsters to form their own version of government?
An Associated Press release announcing a protest march contains the following quote: "As a drug user in the Downtown Eastside, I know what's best for my health and it's not more police," said Cindy Thomson, apparently a member of
VANDU.
She knows what's best for her health and she's a junkie? I have feeling that if she really was worried about her health, she would not be injecting poison into veins. But what do I know?
For most of the '90s the area euphemistically called the Downtown Eastside, more commonly known as The Skids, was essentially ignored by a succession of "progressive" police decisions. Calling crack dealers, who'd as soon cut your heart out as look at you, "clients" was just the sort of fuzzy-headed thinking that created Canada's only open air 24-hour drug
bazaar.
Now that the police finally have a concerted, if still a little weak, policy to attempt to deal with the problems of The Skids, the hand-wringers are calling for them to withdraw. It really is unbelievable.
The streets of the Downtown Eastside are being controlled, ultimately, by organized crime. Whatever efforts the police are making to try and regain control should be applauded and supported. Junkies, now a special interest group lobbying government, spare me.
A quick word about the war in Iraq; media coverage has virtually saturated the airwaves, print media and the Internet.
But, I couldn't help notice on Sunday, that the CBC's main Web site had two links to photo essays. One was about previous day's anti-war and anti-American protests.
The other dealt with a bomb which hit, apparently, four homes in the Baghdad neighbourhood of Raghiba Khatoon. The bomb didn't detonate and no one was injured.
There were no photo essays showing the jubilant citizens of Safwan kissing American soldiers, tears running down their faces, or using their shoes to pound on the face of Saddam as the huge poster was being ripped down, as depicted in the vivid live TV pictures transmitted around the world.
If you get your news from the taxpayer-funded CBC, you'd never even know of the reactions of the average Iraqi welcoming their American liberators.
Just an observation.
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