Posted on 02/12/2005 9:52:42 AM PST by fanfan
Safe place for users cleaned up Vancouver slum, free drugs may make it safer
By AMY CARMICHAEL
Chuck Parker, a heroin addict, stands outside Vancouver's supervised injection sight, Thursday with a poster that has been distributed throughout the Vancouver's eastside calling for volunteers to take part in a radical study. (CP PHOTO/Chuck Stoody)
VANCOUVER (CP) - It's a daily grind for the thousands of junkies living in the city's eastside slum.
Waking up dope sick, the body screaming for a fix. Stumbling to the street to turn a $10-dollar trick and shooting every penny directly into the bloodstream.
Many of those junkies are fighting for a chance to be part of a study that will give them heroin for free.
Crazy? Many people thought the opening of Canada's first supervised injection site a year and a half ago was as sick as the 4,000 addicts spreading HIV and hepatitis in an eight-block neighbourhood, sometimes called Canada's Third World.
Chuck Parker, an addict living above the controversial injection site known as InSite, said the radical project has cleaned up the streets, literally. He thinks free heroin might make them safer.
"We no longer have rigs laying around on our streets, in our alleys and our doorsteps. We no longer have people shooting up in alleys, we no longer have people using water out of a puddle to inject with. They're in here using safe supplies," he said, gesturing to the door of the supervised injection site behind him.
Eight hundred people go to this safe place, subdued with green plants and shaded windows, to get fixed every day.
A huge improvement but it's not a perfect system, Parker acknowledged as a young woman threw herself on the sidewalk beside him and frantically split open her crack case.
Needles and other gear rattled in the tin case as she shakily cooked a bowl of crack.
A bare-chested man in a leather vest and cowboy party hat lurked beside her. A pimp, a john, somebody to do drugs with until they ran out and have to come up with a way to get more.
"It's ridiculous," muttered the long-haired Parker behind his mirrored glasses.
"For some poor girl to have to go out and prostitute herself for $10 in the mornings and again in the evenings. She may be HIV positive, spreading this in society. She's having to lower herself to this position, so vulnerable she could be one of these missing girls on the Downtown Eastside."
More than 60 women, mostly drug-addicted sex-trade workers, have disappeared from the area in the past 20 years. Robert William Pickton, a former Port Coquitlam, B.C., pig farmer, has been charged with 15 counts of first-degree murder in the disappearances.
"How many people end up in alleys being robbed down here, or beaten," Parker said.
"Girls, even the guys who have to prostitute themselves. This is not just a female problem.
"The theft involved in cars being broke into. . . . This could certainly be solved if heroin was free."
Phone lines opened Thursday for people to call and volunteer to be part of the free heroin study, which has spots for 156 addicts.
Similar programs will start in Montreal and Toronto in the spring.
The federal government was quick to agree with the idea and decided it was important to try, said Dr. Martin Schechter, principal investigator on the North American Opiate Medication Initiative (NAOMI) project.
"They looked at the outcomes of similar programs in Switzerland involving 1,100 people. After the first year and a half they noted marked decreases in criminal activity, improved income and increase in physical health, employment," he said.
"And when the costs of free heroin were compared against the savings for the system when these people are functioning better, it was found that overall far more money was saved."
The support gives Parker hope.
"It's not going to solve all our problems, but it shows that Canada is willing to do whatever it takes. This is a real bold step forward, meeting the hardest to reach people on their terms and seeing what we can do together."
Parker has been able to straighten himself out enough to work under a somewhat similar program. He is on a methadone prescription and receiving a free, stable dose has elevated him to place where he can hold down a job.
Parker, a past president of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, does consulting work for various health agencies and acts a liaison for the drug user community.
He's part of a small group who have been able to stay on methadone without going back to heroin.
Methadone has a bad reputation on the street. It's believed to have a worse withdrawal period than heroin and the constant doctor visits users have to make are too much for people who live their lives with no control.
"With NAOMI, people will go through those hoops when they apply and that's it," Parker said. "You can't expect many addicts to sit and fill out a form when they want their fix. It's not going to happen."
Instead, 156 people chosen for NAOMI will go to its Downtown Eastside office, pick up clean needles, rigs and their prescription and immediately inject under the supervision of registered nurses.
Of that group, 80 will be given pharmaceutical grade heroin. The rest will get methadone. Schechter wants to see which is most effective in helping people improve their lives.
It's possible they will find they have time to think about why they need drugs. Participants who want to will be hooked up with counselling services. Some might even be stabilized enough to work.
Nurses will be on the lookout for people who are topping up their dose with street heroin, so people don't overdose.
"People wouldn't want to do that. That's not the nature of addiction," Schechter said.
"We will be testing for other illicit drugs and doses will be adjusted accordingly. If a person comes into the site and it's evident to nurses that they've used on their own they wouldn't be allowed to get their dose for that session."
Just like everybody else, addicts want to be engaged and make their lives as good as they can be, said Mark Townsend, a worker with the Portland Hotel Society, which helps find housing for the hookers and drug users landlords won't take a risk on.
"Everyone thinks they know the best way for people to beat an addiction. If there was such a thing, people would be doing it. The problem is so complicated that we need an equally deep array of treatment methods. One more approach might save one more person, so it's worth trying."
Free heroin will be allowed to flow under the study for 12 months. When that time is up, people who are getting it will go through a three-month transition to a methadone program.
The $8.1-million cost of running the program for a year will be compared to possible savings it might create for the health and justice systems. That might determine whether it will ever make it beyond the study stage, to a pilot project or permanent programs like those operating in Germany, Switzerland and Spain.
"Maybe then we can start thinking about what we really need down here," said Townsend.
"Free counselling."
Just great!
I guess I'm one of the few, but I think that this is a good idea.
The reason: This not only has ramifications for the user and his immediate enviornment, it would have ramifications concerning the growers, traffickers, pushers, etc. If the user can get his stuff free, think what this would do to all theose who make their living off the drug trade. The effect would be the same as the end of Prohibition on bootleggers.
There was a news story recently to the effect that Osama ben Laden and al Qaeda make millions off the drug trade, Those millions are used against us.
Even without the terrorist aspect, free drugs, distributed under tight control, would dry up the international drug cartels.
Further, Prohibition caused the rise of the crime families in the US. Drug prohibition is the cause of the international crime families.
THE EXPERIMENT
WE OFTEN WONDER DEBATE AND QUESTION
what would happen if drugs were legal??
WE WILL SEE
drug addicts break into houses and steal things for drug money... but you don't see alcoholics break into houses for alcohol money.
the reason why is obvious - alcohol is relatively cheap and freely available... winos can legally get hammered with no legal problems.
apply the same principle to heroin.
The money is all ready being spent on the WOD, if this works the only down side is to those in Law Enforcement who take home nice paychecks. This is who the WOD is for, like everything else follow the money.
You are correct give the market a chance.
Less money spent on the WOD = More take home pay.
"Fixing" people.
So maybe they can clean up enough to get "jobs".
...Jobs "fixing" other people.
State-run? Insanity.
Thanks for making the leap.
If drugs were legal the cartels and all their baggage would be left in the dust. How many alcoholics were caused by Prohibition? I would guess quite a few, for the simple reason that many young people want to do and try things that the "old folks" think are bad--they want to rebel. In the late 1940's and on into the 1950's I was one such. (I was also very stupid, but that's another story).
In any case, I think that Prohibition in the 1920's and the so-called war on drugs today parallel each other and that the solution is the same: make it legal
Consider the war on drugs: If we had fought WW II with the same efficency, we'd be speaking German and/or Japanese today.
We should put large notices up in druggie hangouts in the USA that Canada is giving the stuff away.
The druggies will join the DU crowd making a beeline to Canada. (Obviously many druggies are DUers and vice versa.)
The druggies will join the DU crowd making a beeline to Canada. (Obviously many druggies are DUers and vice versa.)
Oh, Thanks. First you send up all your liberals, and now want to send the druggies too? (the ones that aren't DUers) Man! I hate my socialist country some days.
How about we put them into rehab so they can be productive members of society?
<< I guess I'm one of the few, but I think that this is a good idea. >>
Althoug well motivated and headed in the right direction, in that it deals with the symptom and ignores the disease, [Crime] it's an obscene "idea."
There is only one "drug crime" and that is the one called Prohibition.
Repeal that one and EVERY "drug problem" -- and above 90% of the world's crime and corruption -- and, to boot, the filthy loot that, from Singapore to Caracas -- Rangoon to Bogota -- Kuala Lumpur to Khartoum -- drives most of the worlds petty through more-bloody-awful dictatorships -- flies out the window.
BTW, when our government says $8 million, they really mean $4 Billion. Our gun registry was supposed to cost $2 Million, and it's over $1 Billion now, AND, it still doesn't work. Aaarrrgggggg!
They get to wait in lines sometimes over a year, and pay for their own drugs and medical needs while doing so. The medical system could use the 8 million this prgrams is costing, drug addicts can go to hell. This only makes the streets worse, atracting more from all sround.
They get to wait in lines sometimes over a year, and pay for their own drugs and medical needs while doing so. The medical system could use the 8 million this prgrams is costing, drug addicts can go to hell. This only makes the streets worse, atracting more from all sround.
Hmmm, maybe I'm a little slow but are they transitioning these people off of drugs? If so, I'm willing to give this program a chance. If they're just giving them their fix with no end in site except for the end of the program, well then, I have a little problem with that.
Next thing you know, tweakers will want a similar program with the ACLU supporting them.
Hell, I want a similar program, I'm addicted to wine, hook me up!
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