About U.S. drug czar John Walters’ office: “They’re still in ‘Reefer Madness,’ ” says Vancouver, B.C.’s mayor Larry Campbell. Mayor Campbell is referring “to a laughable anti-drug movie of the 1930s,” writes Seattle P.I. columnist Joel Connelly.
“Drug czars are the most ill-informed people in government, John Walters is pushing against good science. He’s pushing an agenda that doesn’t fit in the real world. He’s in denial.”
Campbell ought to know. He’s “a former Royal Canadian Mounted Police constable, and veteran of the Drug Squad, who became the first Vancouver district coroner. He was named B.C. chief coroner in 1996 at a time when drug overdose deaths were skyrocketing to as many as 400 a year.”
Campbell is also angry with the “timidity” of Canadian feds who propose decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana.
“The growing of marijuana in this province is a $3 billion to $7 billion business. Who is making money off it? Organized crime, that’s who. No taxes are being paid. No social benefits are realized.” More from Campbell below:
The mayor even gets personal. Campbell noted that his sister is undergoing chemotherapy.
“I’ve told her — she is a non-smoker — ‘If you get nauseous, I’ll get you some B.C. Bud,’ ” said Campbell, referring to the informal name of British Columbia’s leading agricultural export.
“Why? To relieve her pain,” Campbell added. “Is that not what we are about as humans?”
During ratings-driven “sweeps months,” Seattle TV stations often make a beeline for Vancouver’s drug-riddled Downtown Eastside neighborhood. They’ve filmed addicts shooting up and breaking into cars to support their habit, and they’ve trekked to the much-publicized Cannabis Cafe — until the police shut it down.
The TV cameras just show the surface of suffering. Recently, I went to Alliance Francaise, a local cultural center, to see a harrowing exhibit by French photographer Marc Josse.
Josse spent a year in the neighborhood. “We have drug problems, but nothing like this,” he told Daniel Girard of The Toronto Star. The exhibit, Eastside Stories, details the lives of people, in Josse’s words, “suffering and dying of indifference.”
The Downtown Eastside proved to be an epiphany for Campbell.
What changed the RCMP drug squad veteran? “I became a coroner,” said Campbell. “My goal was not enforcement. It became saving peoples’ lives.”
Vancouver has moved to remedy its indifference.
Campbell champions what is called the Four Pillars approach to Vancouver’s drug crisis — harm reduction, treatment, prevention and enforcement.
A centerpiece is the city’s supervised injection center, where addicts can shoot up — “We have almost 600 injections a day,” said Campbell — while also receiving health care and counseling on how to kick their habit.
In Campbell’s opinion, the radical measure has broken up the street drug trade, and saved lives by providing emergency response to drug overdoses and curbing needle-spread HIV-AIDS and Hepatitis C.
Read Joel Connell’s full column. I excised all the sections describing Seattle’s positive efforts and an interview with a Seattle Hemp Festival organizer.
