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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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Topic Author's Original Post - Sep 5, 2012 - 02:01pm PT
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Let's face it. These are our brothers and sisters.
When we see them as people, rather than as "them", it's a more complete picture.
I'm not the judge, just an observer of life and the human condition.
All I know is that I don't want them in jail. These people are slaves, not masters of crime.
Listen to the WORDS of the clip, rather than just looking at images.
It's a deep dark hole, I've seen it.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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michaeld
Sport climber
Sacramento
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I'm all for clean needles and safe place for drugs.
I'm all for dealers being arrested and prosecuted. Not told "No".
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RyanD
climber
Squamish
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Addicts are definitely not masters of crime unless you consider smashing someones car windows for $0.48 laying on the seat mastery. I don't, but I do consider it criminal. I would also have to disagree with the idea that addicts are slaves. Slaves do not have the opportunity to say no. Addicts do, or did at one point have the opportunity to say no. Doing heroin is a personal choice. Once you have made that choice, or any choice in life- You should be accountable for it, even if the result is you becoming addicted to the gnarliest drug on the planet.
I am not trying to be unsympathetic as I do think it is sad down there & has been for around 20yrs now but as long as people do not want to get the help they need there will be no chance of this problem being corrected. Vancouver has many options for addicts looking to recover & get a second chance but such a large percentage are much happier with the easy route which is food banks & welfare while trolling for cash however necessary thru cans, crime or prostitution in order to grab a few points & shoot up on the side of Hastings right in front of the cop who just pulled me over & is giving me a ticket for $150 for failing to come to a complete stop before making a right turn.
There are many addicts who recover & go on to live a fulfilling life. The common theme amongst them is that there was a personal choice to make a change. We can want people to change & be what we want all day but until the person is ready & really wants to change our attempts to change any person will always be futile. This goes for most things in life, Heroin addiction is just an extreme example & massive challenge for anyone who has made that very horrible choice.
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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 5, 2012 - 04:26pm PT
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Choice yes.
But many people didn't start from the same ground level on the choice "ladder", would you agree?
There are so many kinds of people, some strong and confident, and some that are born more shy, introverted and quiet. Then you throw in all the stuff that these people had no choice about as children.
*Poverty
*Broken homes
*Parents that didn't know how to provide, raise, educate or love.
*Abuse
*Addiction of parents and friends
*Shitty neighborhoods etc.
Then there was a "choice" moment to grab a cheap escape, a hiding place from the world. But they hid behind one of the most powerful and seductive drugs known to human history.
Anyone who's been addicted to anything can tell you that it's not as easy as cleaning up in jail for a few days/weeks and bingo, you're good to go on your new life.......
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Cloudraker
Sport climber
San Diego, CA
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Interesting to note that the Insite Injection Clinic featured in that video doesn't just cater to hardcore drug addicts. Here is a video of a guy who is a first time user learning how to cook and bang heroin from a healthcare worker. Forward to 7:20 in the video for the visit to Insite.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand it's better than learning how to do heroin in an alley, but on the other it's encouraging and normalizing the experience for the user.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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There is unecquivocal evidence that the safe injection site has saved many lives. Whatever your beliefs as to whether or not society should be facilitating such things, it works. It has also been subject to constitutional challenges, right up to our supreme court. Our present federal government and its allies would like to shut it down, given their belief systems. There's even been the usual junk 'science', which hasn't had much credibility.
http://supervisedinjection.vch.ca/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insite
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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As someone who was involved in Vancouver's decision to move toward this model of dealing with the problems in the downtown eastside, I should weigh in with some comments.
Unfortunately, I'm on deadline and can't put the required thought into it until tonight. I'll try to post then, but the short version is that this is about far more than "the drug problem."
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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 5, 2012 - 05:06pm PT
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Great post Anders.
Ghost, I look forward to what you have to say.
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RyanD
climber
Squamish
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Hey Survival thanks, I agree with what you are saying for sure & have personally dealt with more than a few of the conditions which you listed. I also think this is a really interesting topic. I don't think these folks should go to jail either for being addicts but I also think all humans are equal & all humans need to be accountable for their decisions & actions. As Ghost touched on, there are many options available for people who are affected & also that there is more than just a "drug problem", as Anders stated the options provided actually work & lives have been saved. My post was more referring to the fact that an addict who does not want help will likely never be helped. It is their choice to go to insite & get taught how to shoot up properly or they can go to insite & ask for some counseling. I am aware that in the face of a substance as destructive as heroin, meth, or crack that realizing you need help is a difficult, if impossible thing to do but the fact is if u get high you will come down, the decision to get help or get high again is always yours & yours alone when the cruel face of sobriety shows up at your door after a bender. I have more than a few friends who have ended up down there, some came back, some did not. The ones who did not come back did not want to, they didn't nessecarily come from broken homes or poverty either, so I do not see that as being an acceptable excuse or blanket statement for generalizing all addicts. There's more than a few prom queens & quarterbacks down there too.
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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 5, 2012 - 06:04pm PT
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Agreed. I didn't come from a broken background, and I've still made poor choices......
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RyanD
climber
Squamish
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What's up with Abbotsford Bruce? Enlighten please.
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Tricouni
Mountain climber
Vancouver
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Anders, excellent summary of what is my position, too. And, Ghost, please get back to us with your perspective.
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MH2
climber
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Well said, Bruce Kay. Both posts.
Survival,
A person can be a brother or sister and a slave and a master of crime.
We need to learn what we can to help desperate people. I remember the rec.climber who posted about his habit. He said that when he first tried heroin, it was the first time in his life that he felt normal. Ghost should know who I'm talking about. Although we are all alike in many ways, we can be very different in others.
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Okay. 01:30 and work is done, and I can finally get something posted on this subject.
Let me start by pointing out that very few people in the US have any idea of the scope of this issue in Vancouver. They think of Vancouver as a beautiful, peaceful place where nothing bad could ever happen. Or at least not on the scale of what they see in US cities. In fact, Vancouver has long been the heroin capital of North America, and the AIDS capital of the first world. It has more than its share of other drugs, too. And the gang violence that goes along with them.
Twelve years ago, with rumors of a new approach being taken by police and legislators in Europe, the province of BC sent the senior detective from the Vancouver PD drug squad to Germany to work with not just the police, but also the city administration and municipal health officials in Hamburg, which was reporting some startling results.
I was just an unemployed climbing bum at the time, but the cop that went to Germany was a close friend and regular climbing partner, and when he returned, he put me to work preparing the presentation he was going to make to all the top brass in the Police Department, the City Council, and the Provincial government. (I was a graphic designer and writer by trade and he thought my input would help).
So I helped create the presentation that changed the entire approach taken by the city toward "the drug problem."
The old approach -- which is still the standard in most of North America -- was that drugs are bad, and that both users and dealers should be punished. For over a decade the US War On Drugs had provided clear evidence that that approach was a complete waste of time and money, but because "drugs are bad" there was no alternative.
The approach he saw in Europe was completely different. Hamburg had had a serious drug problem, and they had tried the "catch them and punish them" approach. But at some point they had taken off their blinders and said something like "Wait a minute. What is it that we really want?" On reflection, what they decided was that what they really wanted was to alleviate the problems that spring from drug addiction -- particularly the kind of crime that springs from it.
I don't know how they came up with the solution they did. Probably a lot of trial and error, but in the end what they found was that when they effectively de-criminalized and de-stigmatized drug use and set up safe injection sites for users, drug-related crime dropped steeply. I built charts from their data, tracking all kinds of different crime over a period of about ten years, and most of it was down by at least half. Muggings, break & enter, car break-ins... It turned out that a lot of the addict population found they could lead a semi-normal life if they had a safe place to shoot up, and if the stigma of addiction was reduced. Apparently a fair number of them were able to find and keep jobs.
But the real deal-sealer was that the non-addict population found their lives vastly improved. You know, because their cars weren't broken into. Because their purses weren't snatched. Because they weren't mugged. Because their store windows weren't smashed. Because the junkies slept off their fix indoors, rather than in the street. Government liked it, too, because health care and policing costs fell.
They called it the "harm-reduction" approach, and while it didn't do much to dent drug use, it sure did make life better for just about everyone.
I don't know how much my input into the presentation did to tip anyone's view, but the senior guys on the Police Department and from the city government bought in, and started Vancouver down the harm-reduction road.
I moved to Seattle shortly after that, and my understanding is that the "drugs are bad" believers never gave up the fight to go back to the old ways, and that the implementation of the harm-reduction model has been less than complete. But to the extent that it has been implemented, I think it has made a lot of lives better.
D
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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 6, 2012 - 09:46am PT
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Thank gawd there are those who are willing to look deeper than the "drugs are bad" model, and contribute to real solutions, or at least more humane efforts. Yes, I'm sure a bit of dignity is massively helpful to these people. I know it would be for me...
Ghost, thanks to the detective who went to Germany, and thanks to you for your work in the trenches, so to speak. You're one of the good guys, no doubt in my mind.
Henceforth, you will not be awarded 3 gold stars or 2 thumbs up, but the coveted Hatch chile!!!
The above post, my friend, is 5 Hatch up!!!!
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Thanks Bruce. Maybe one of the Vancouver folk has some input about how the implementation has gone over the last decade. As I said, There are plenty of people who are more than happy to forego the greater good in order to serve the "drugs are bad" god, and, as always, plenty of politicians who will pander to them.
On a more personal note, you should know that a few of us Seattle Supertopians raised our glasses to you on Monday night. Steve is out of town, but Mimi was able to join Wayno and I and our wives (and Wayne's mother-in-law) for dinner on labor day -- dinner which had a fair load of the peppers you gave me last year in it.
Wayne loves pork chile verde just as much as I do, and those New Mexican peppers you grow sure do suit it.
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Tricouni
Mountain climber
Vancouver
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Ghost, thanks for the informative post. Do you have any comments or knowledge of how Vancouver's approach has worked compared with that taken in Portugal (decriminalization of all drugs)? What's the current situation in Seattle?
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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 6, 2012 - 11:43am PT
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Back to Cloudrakers video post: WHOA! That's some "serious" research that guy did.
How can we know what these people are up against unless we've lived a minute in their shoes?
I wanna see Michelle Bachman's eyes roll back in her head when she hits that first rush....and leaves her husband...heh heh. Gak I'm bad!
Particularly telling were the two officials that speak between 4 and 5 minutes on the clip.
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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 6, 2012 - 12:24pm PT
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Part six is way powerful also. Especially near the end when the guy is comparing our addiction to oil, and says we too are junkies, and then we have the nuts to tell other addicts not to engage in self destructive behavior.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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As someone with a brother who lives beyond the pale, despite many concerted
and expensive efforts to bring him back, I'm not gonna watch the video. It
is good that those people aren't making their lives worse with dirty needles.
The sad thing is that as with most of society's ills only the symptoms are
being addressed.
Also sad is that I remember walking around downtown Vancouver in the late 60's
thinking what a paradise it was - kind of like a large scale Prince George.
Was there a few years ago and it seemed pretty tawdry, if ostensibly hip.
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