Magnificent article in the Surrey Now by Tom Zytaruk. He compares our lopsided version of harm reduction to pouring more gasoline on a fire. Handing out free needles is one thing. Handing out free crack pipes and letting crack dealers sell crack is another. The article confirms that the Whalley Strip where they let crack dealers sell crack is a magnet for crime. Wherever the police *allow* drug dealers to sell crack, crime statistics jump exponentially. Now the failed social experiment has seen a dramatic increase in crime and has left us knee deep in needles.
Needle exchanges used to be exchanges. You hand in a used needle for a new clean one. Once they did away with that policy, needles were thrown everywhere. Schools, playgrounds, even in the isles of the Whalley Safeway. Used needles are everywhere and it has become a serious health risk to everyone in the community. Even Snoop Dog thinks it's crazy.
Tom Zytaruk also cites valid concerns about the insane request to build a "safe" inhalation site for people to smoke crack. Aside from being absurd he quotes W.P. Kinsella who said “If you build it, he will come.” He then correctly applies that to a "safe" injection site in Surrey and how that will attract drug users and potential drug users from across the country and around the world. That is something we do not need or want in our community.
In my opinion:
ReplyDeleteThese overdoses are happening by design, Mayor Hepner and now MP Dianne Watts with their gang created this mess; hence they are now trying to clean it up in a very cruel way. You can fault Hepner all you want, but she didn’t start it, your “beloved Crook & Liar” did.
Tom mentioned Bob Bose, yes, he tried to make it right but the Surrey First had a total different agenda, called Developing fast and furious above all. Where can you develop and develop and ignore what it does to the average folks and especially the people in poverty? Yes, in Surrey, Surrey First has been building this lucrative business for over a decade, and the results are obviously devastating now.
By keeping the blinds on and ignoring the very fact where this all begun and how it developed is only making the situation more fatal as many more will die on the Street of Surrey.
Tom is quite right when he points out the early 1990’s. I use to work in one of the clinics as a nurse during that time. We treated drug addicts and prostitutes on a daily basis. At that time the majority of patients would come from Vancouver not Surrey. I got to know many of them through the clinic, and it was bad then, as I had never seen anything like it in my life. It was pretty obvious to me then that if this problem wouldn’t get dealt with swiftly we would end up with what we see today. Some of the addicts and prostitutes got beaten up badly, the Turf war had already begun and once the Front Room opened it was a speedy downhill.
We don’t need a crazy solution (Safe-Injection-Site) to the Drug problem that is like treating a leg amputee for a foot problem.
The need to get into drugs starts with what is going on in a persons life, neglect, abandonment, mental illness, poverty just to mention a few, that’s the addicts side, the other side is the lucrative business it creates, greed, power and status which is achieved by selling drugs of all sorts.
As a nurse my focus is always finding a way through prevention not treatment, of course the dealers will disagree so will Pharma Greed and all the individuals profiting from this easy flowing cash cow.
We need to start where the future is born and created. People need to able to have access to a home, food, clothes and jobs. We cannot create a “stable” society when the majority of citizens can’t make ends meet. Everything today is structured with enormous greed and profit that has to be achieved yesterday, which means, workers employees don’t get the chance to work themselves up and make a living, hence too many babies are born into poverty. Again, what we experience today is poverty by design as we have politicians that rule not govern us.
In order to make a society self-sufficient the attention needs to be put where help is needed, not with the greedy rich and famous as they are already established. The result of pushing the less fortunate into greater poverty, homelessness and dire straight is what we see on our streets today.
If every human being would “Want” less and give/share more, we would have a more civilized society and the need to do and deal drugs would have less attraction.
I like every quote Tom pointed out, but especially the one from Einstein: Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Maggie Bernet