Vancouver's Radical Approach to Drugs: Let Junkies Be Junkies

Agreed... for one, if they are legalized, the price can be fixed and taxed so that junkies don't waste their life savings on their habit. Also, it would completely put the cartels and dealers out of business.

For anyone who says that this is enabling junkies and a bad idea, think about this: prescription drug abuse is plaguing this continent just as badly as the illegal ones. Maybe if we legalized and regulated the illegal drug forms, it will alleviate the crime and disease that is perpetuated as a result.

I agree that no matter how many scare tactics they use or how many laws passed, people will get high... so giving them a safe place to do so and clean products to use is probably the next best thing we can do for them. Just my two cents.

Power:

And regulated.

Look at the Netherlands. They have legalized weed other drugs, and their junkies go to the pharmacy to get their prescription-fix in a premium quality with clean needles etc.

Result: crime is down, diseases are down, and there's no examples that the percentage of neither the young or older generation are bigger, when it comes to drug users.

Education and information is key.

agree PIK

Prohibition should have taught us this lesson

Prohibition should have been an eye opener. But we have a country that likes to continually ram its collective head against the wall. That and "war on drugs" is multi-billion dollar industry.

I have and it is... but in Vancouver, everyone knows that area and is free to steer clear of it. Isn't that much better than having them on random street corners all over the city?

everyone knows that area and is free to steer clear of it.

Except for visitors. I haven't been to vancouver much lately, but I do remember it being pretty easy to stumble into the wrong part of town.

But it is easy to wonder into the wrong neighborhoods in any city. It's not like they put signs saying, " You have offically crossed over to the wrong side of the tracks."

I lived in Vancouver for years.

The area around Main & Hastings is the poorest zip code in Canada. The drug activists make it sound like the safe sites are the greatest thing since sliced bread. In reality, however, it has turned the area into an open-air prison where only the most blatant criminal acts will be acted upon by the prison guards... oops, police. It's a cheaper solution than putting them all in jail, which is why it was embraced so enthusiastically by the local authorities. Let the dealers, the prostitutes, the thugs, the mentally ill, and the addicts support themselves while being trapped in a zone that guarantees a slow, painful, horrible demise.

My Dad didn't believe me that the area was that bad. So when he was in town I drove him through those few short blocks. "My God, how could this exist in this country, My God, Good Good," was what he stammered in shock.

Like Brian wrote, the area is populated by hardcore dealers, prositutes - and their pimps, the unfortunately mentally ill, and legions of the undead - otherwise known as addicts. They shamble and stagger about, or lie unconscious on the sidewalks and in the alleyways. You see people negotiating drug deals and shooting up in the open.

The solution isn't a safe site/open air prison. It is decriminalisation, period. A really safe site is someone's home. If the people who use drugs can get away from "the life" on the streets they have a chance of not falling into the pattern of addiction which steals and destroys lives.

The cannabis cafes, btw, which used to be relatively respectable, have fallen under the spell of the neighbouring region. Squalid. I wouldn't go there any longer - there used to be a time when I wouldn't hesitate to do so. The cops raid them. The cops raid the seed sellers.

That's sort of a weird statement. You say they are harmless, but then you are afraid of them?????????

Hmm, maybe I phrased that wrong, I apologize. I'm trying to tie in the fact that they are all now located in one location with resources to support their habit and a legal venue in which to do so, which I believe will reduce the incidence of violence in Vancouver, even in that area and that knowing where they are just makes it all the easier to avoid any confrontation should they be violent (though I haven't seen it or heard of it in my own experiences).

In contrast, Montreal has nothing like that and the junkies (though not the homeless, I apologize if that was misconstrued), not having the same type of set-up are still pretty criminal in their desperation to get a fix.

I have no statistics for this guys, this is just from my own observations of the handful of trips to Vancouver and the areas I frequently pass living here in Montreal. I hope I cleared up my position though!

It can be pretty scary down there on Hastings Street.   We were walking near Gastown one afternoon several years ago and saw many drug transactions taking place at major intersections in broad daylight. Never forget the skinny hooker riding around on her bike announcing to one and all: "Take it up the ass for twenty bucks." 

I think it's news because it's a first for North America. I wholeheartedly agree with your post, thanks!

I agree Sea.

we locked up 800,000 people in 2006 for weed alone! I think the stat for drug offenders for 07 was 1.5 million (not sure though).