Enabling Drug Use Isn’t Working
The real solution lies within families and in addiction treatment
Commentary
Facing a surge in opioid overdose deaths he calls an “absolute catastrophe,” Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart is hoping for help by asking Ottawa to decriminalize possession of small amounts of illicit drugs.
Some police want a safe supply of drugs free of the deadly fentanyl, which comes from China but also domestic sources.
Others say that legalized safe sources might ease matters in the short term, but that the real solution is to get addicts off drugs completely.
“We have to start taking some action toward a recovery-oriented system,” said Dr. Carson McPherson, managing director of Cedars at Cobble Hill, a B.C. drug addiction treatment facility. He told Global News that supplying drugs is “playing into what’s ultimately a sick-care system and not a health-care system.”
Coddling drug users will never work Re: “It’s time for us to stop enabling the addicts among us,” letter, Jan. 30. Monica Babic’s letter brought me back to the late 1960s, when I was involved in drug education programs on the East Coast. It was LSD, acid and the “friendly” marijuana days giving the youth of the day altered states of consciousness. We quickly learned that presentations by medical professionals to enlighten young minds about the curse of drugs were useless. Instead, we brought in known former drug users, those who had been down that godawful road to addiction but somehow managed to be “free,” at least for a time.
North Saanich Re: “Ship that went down 52 years ago fouling Nootka Sound waters,” Dec 12. Oil from a dead ship is polluting “an area of ecological and cultural significance.” The ship sank 52 years ago, but the fossil fuels might be still leaking out. This is the reason to clean up dead boats in the waters around Victoria. Those dead boats all contain dirty oil in their engines’ crankcases, and diesel fuel or gasoline in the fuel tanks. When that stuff leaks out from a dead boat, exactly the same thing will happen as in Nootka Sound; on a smaller scale, but still, polluting fossil fuels.