"Parties Over"
This is why I don't watch the News.....
If someone wants to piss me off without fail, all they have to do is put a suit in front of a camera as he announces that he is about to spend millions of tax payer's dollars to play politics with other peoples lives.
When spin doctoring a new drug strategy, Harper and Clement have actually announced spending 21 million dollars on enforcement of drug law's as "Harm Reduction". Actually Assholes, Harm Reduction is Needle Exchange Programs (NEP's) and Safe Injection Sites. Both of which you are planning on cutting funding to (despite a budget surplus) or canceling altogether.
Canada's one and only shooting gallery is set to be shut down December 31st,2007. The first year this Injection site was opened it had served on average 600 people per day and dealt with 107 overdoses without a single fatality. Hundreds of people got their referal into treatment from this site alone, but it will be closed next year because it "promotes drug use" and "increases crime" in the area. 130 physicians, that deal with addiction (and more importantly myself) disagree. First of all, how the fuck could anyone notice an increase in crime in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. Obviously Clement and Harper have never set foot in this area (As a matter of fact, why was their announcement made in Winnipeg, when it should have been made in the DTES?).
When I lived on Carral and Hastings, I saw a man stabbed to death beside a police station for a five dollar pebble of crack, beside the police station on Main. Would that have happened in a Safe Shooting Site? How about the robberies, killings and rapes that happen in alley way's or apartments across this country, when an addict uses it as a refuge from police to score and shoot. Would this happen in a safe injection site?
Half of New HIV/AIDS infections were amongst injection drug users. This sounds like a perfectly good time to cut funding to NEP's.
McMaster University researched an NEP in Hamilton. The study showed that the site gave more that 14,200 needles to 275 drug users in 1995. Possibly preventing 24 new HIV infections. The lifetime cost of treating a single person with HIV/AIDS is 1.3 million.
In 2003 the HIV rate in Alberta was lowered, from 70 new infections in '98 to 31. 2003 was the same year that the number of outreach workers doubled (coincidence?). This isn't as impressive as southern Australia where 55 NEP's, serving 1.2 million addicts, saw three consecutive years without a single new infection. In the US a national institute of Health study demonstrated a 30 percent reduction in new HIV/AIDS infections due to NEP's.
Yeah, these Needle Exchange Programs, are really bad news.
I've cleaned up dirty rig's both in Montreal and Vancouver, and couldn't Imagine what the public parks and alley ways would look like without these exchange programs (they could look a lot better if there was more funding for organizations such as TAPAJ and Street Youth Job Action).
The Conservatives also elluded to Mandatory Minimum Sentences for traficking convictions. The same strategy that has overcrowded American Prisons, and done less to curb drugs on the street than conventional policing and treatment.
An American think tank called the RAND institute claims that a 1 million dollar increase in funding for MMS, would reduce aproximately 13 kilograms of cocaine consumption. As opposed to 27 kgm's with traditional policing or 100 kgm's with treatment. Since the Reagen era politicians enacted Mandatory Minimum Sentences, the prison population has more than doubled, with 80% of this increase being attributed to drug convictions. American police chiefs, Judges, and "Csars" have said that this strategy is unworkable. A politician blinded with Ideology doesn't look at the reality of the situation, he looks at polls (what he can get away with), and possibly his latest correspondence with the man child running the country south of him for confirmation.
A prison is a place, that by design you have no freedom. Your cell, your posessions, and even your person can be scrutinized at any moment. Yet,drugs can be found in our prisons. So how can people expect the police to rid this country of drugs, without the suppresion of human liberties (when even then, it's impossible).
When I was in Montreal, I witnessed an entire crew selling cocaine and pot get arrested over the course of a night (roughly ten people). The person that managed this group called up his guy, and these ten people were replaced within ten minutes. Look at all of the shootings in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal and Calgary. The dealers don't give a fuck if they live or die. Why would they care about mandatory minimum sentences? As long as there is money, there will be somebody desperate, brave, crazy, or connected enough to sell drugs. Huge criminal sentences might discourage the everyday person from selling, but isn't that just eliminating competition and increasing profit for the big boys?
Of course, They aren't after the big boy's. Anyone on the street has seen this bullshit before and can see through It. The cops will target a couple of grow op's and bust a couple street level dealers and go back to defrauding their own pension funds.
They are too busy with pot to target the Meth Labs and Crack Den's anyhow. Since the conservatives took power there has been a 20-50 % increase in simple possesion pot charges in Toronto, Ottawa, and Halifax.
50 % of drug convictions are cannabis related, resulting in 150 million dollars in court costs. Imagine if that was invested into treatment, instead of the measly 30 million proposed. I might have not had to wait a month and a half for an assesment at my local addictions support centre.
In a period of prohibition, 4.5 million Canadians have smoked pot at least once in 2004, according to Health Canada. They also claim 10 % use it everyday. 10 million Canadians claim that they have smoked pot at least once in their life. yet in 2001, 49,639 people were arrested for something 12 percent of the population has done (both showing the rediculousness of the law, and the ineptitude of those enforcing it).
But Marijuana is a gateway drug? Well what about health studies that show that children that smoke cigarettes are twice as likely to use drugs.
Perhaps it's the drug policies themselves that promote the experimentation with hard drugs. I remember that during my life time that pot had no serious long term effects, which was kind of funny because it was lumped in with crack and smack.
I started with pot, when I wasn't drinking a lot( well, I'm paranoid, hungry, and sleepy. I either talk too much or can't hold a conversation worth shit. Maybe pot isn't the drug for me), so I ventured into mushrooms (well I get a little depressed the next day, and I collapse when I mix it with alcohol, so I won't mix and I'll keep it down to once a month. Sure goes good with music and nature). All of this was working fine until I got into heavy drinking and crack (more, more, more, and then I feel sick. It sure keeps me awake longer for more booze though). And then heroin (whoah, lethargy, inner bliss, seemingly prophetic dreams. Boy do I feel sick).
But, before even Tony Clement told me so. The Party was over. My life was a train wreck and I made a personal decision (whoah, imagine that. The plebians are capable of making decisions without big brother dictating them to do so) to quit doing drugs. I drank a lot to keep myself away from crack and smack. I relapsed a few times. But on the most part I've been clean ever since.
But now I can't get off the booze. It will take me another ten days to go through my assesment and possibly another month to get into treatment. The treatment centres are so full across the province, that people are being sent from Toronto and Ottawa to Sudbury. What thirty million dollars will do to help this, I don't know. But like I said, with a few policy changes and an extra 150 million reinvested into treatment (instead of courts and policing) that would be a good start.
I'll end with a few questions.
Why wasn't cocaine reaching epidemic proportions when it was legal?
Since,77% of the country drinks. 3 million smoke pot. at least a million are smoking crack or meth,shooting dope or popping pills. Why does it not occur to people that millions of Canadians are self medicating, and try to cure the mental health issues related to drug use in the first place?
Why do we elect suits, who have lived insulated lives, to solve problems that they have never known?
Well off to the liquor store I guess. That two minute news report has taken enough time out of my day. I'd really like to find some pot and mushrooms. But I guess I should get used to that being hard to find.
