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Crackheads, crackpots, police and politics

Ottawa’s drug problem has been getting a fresh surge of attention lately. Between the W-FIVE piece last week entitled Capital Shame, the controversy about expanding the harm reduction programs, and our Medical Officer of Health, David Salisbury, resigning, we’re in the spotlight.

I went to a public meeting at City Hall about the drug problem last night. It was put on by the Police Services Board.

For the first hour police outlined the nature of Ottawa’s drug problem from their perspective. Like most things, the problem shifts depending on the angle from which you view it, and this was the police angle.

The police clearly saw this as public education, and it was. But I’m not sure if they really get that their understanding of the problem is only one understanding of the problem, and that there are other equally valid perspectives.

I would have liked to have seen the public education component of the evening represented more fully – a nurse-activist, for example, would have added more dimensionality, and a drug addict could have provided an illuminating contribution to public education.

After the first hour, we moved along to questions and answers. Again, the police fielded most of the questions. Again, the same limitations prevailed.

For example, the list of things the public can do to help included things like “Report sex trade workers to the police,” with the explanation that the police will ‘help’ them. I’m sure the sex trade workers have an entirely different experience and perception of how that works.

These kinds of meetings always seem to attract at least a couple of vigilantes and wingnuts. Last night was no exception.

There was a guy whose ‘question’ was something like this: “The police better get off their butts and do something before we take things into our own hands and start kicking some butt ourselves.” And then he went on for awhile quoting George W. Bush about terrorism and drugs. Pretty tough talk for a little man in a matching yellow shorts set.

There was also a woman named Melissa who lives on York Street who said she found a man who had been murdered in her back yard a few weeks ago, and all of her friends have been mugged at knifepoint. I’m not saying she’s lying, but I’ve lived in this city pretty much all my life, and I don’t recall me or any of my friends ever being mugged.

Of course no public meeting about the scourge of drugs would be complete without a morally outraged granny with her Zip-loc bag of discarded needles and crack pipes, her voice shaking with rage as she shouts about how appalled she is. This tactic might have been effective the first few times – and it still attracts the cameras because a picture of a bag of needles is more interesting than a picture of someone talking – but honestly, the Grandma Drama Queen routine is starting to seem kind of stale and contrived.

I was pleased to see the mayor show up for the second half of the meeting. I was even feeling a bit favourably disposed towards him for making the effort. I wanted him to say something useful that I could quote without poking fun of him.

“C’mon Larry,” I urged under my breath when I saw him take the microphone, “Gimme something to work with here.”

But you know what he said?

“This is not just a fight, this is a war….Sometimes we’re going to have some friendly fire but we WILL win this war.”

“Jesus, Larry,” I sighed to myself, “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got? A lousy Bush imitation? What am I supposed to do with that?”

Meanwhile, Vern White, the police chief, did move up a notch in my book. He said that drugs were a complex problem and he even mentioned housing, homelessness, mental illness and other concurrent problems. He clearly stated that enforcement on its own was not enough.

Overall I found the meeting depressing because I felt like I was surrounded by people who despise addicts and want them to either just miraculously quit being addicts or else just die.

But then a woman from the Somerset West Health Centre stood up and said that unless we address the root causes of addiction we will never solve this problem. She said all four pillars of an integrated approach were essential: prevention, enforcement, harm reduction and treatment. She said as far as treatment goes, we can’t just call for a youth treatment centre (which is what the mayor and others want) because we have lots of older addicts in this community.

This was so much more measured and humane and pragmatic than much of what I had been hearing all evening, and I felt better after she spoke.

It’ll be interesting to see where Ottawa goes with the problem of drugs. I don’t think it can be solved until we get serious about addressing its root causes like poverty, alienation, untreated mental illness, despair, abuse, and lack of opportunities for some segments of the population. From what I can see, we’re nowhere close to that. We’re still talking about addictions primarily in terms of how inconvenient it is for non-addicts.

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16 comments to Crackheads, crackpots, police and politics

  • That “youth treatment centre” idea has always bugged me… I guess someone will first have to define “youth” but it’s pretty rare to find someone in their teens or early twenties at the Salvation Army, Shepherds or any other shelter. Most of the “youth” addicts/friends I knew back in the day lived with their parents who had the wherewithal to get them into private treatment programs or counselling.

    I know there are kids in Ontario cities (I’m assuming the YTC would be provincial and not municipal) who need a full time stay in a treatment centre, and they have to be segregated from the adult addicts, but… I don’t know. There needs to be a total rewrite of the system as it stands, and it doesn’t start and end with a YTC in downtown Ottawa. Personally I don’t see the City of Ottawa going that far with any of this. A YTC falls under Provincial mandate because it’s a health issue and the province is broke. Ottawa is a good place for one, as long as it was part of a larger program… like if it was attached to the Ottawa General Hospital psych ward.

    “…poverty, alienation, untreated mental illness, despair, abuse, and lack of opportunities for some segments of the population.”

    See… a lot of that can be stopped within the system. Better drug treatment inside prisons, for example. But that really means better and more prisons, which means actually building more prisons… not something too many people enjoy voting for.

    Better education and retraining inside prisons… CORCAN (http://www.corcan.ca), the business arm of Corrections Canada, has set up great partnerships with Colleges like CDI so when inmates are paroled they also get a diploma in “Computer Repair” or something. Then they can apply for non-bonded positions and have the paperwork. But CORCAN needs more partners to make it really work.

    The Reserve System in Canada is just fucking retarded from top down. Until Natives can own their own property on reserves nothing will be done to stop the poverty which breeds addictions. But the problem with the Reserves isn’t the federal government, it’s the band system which refuses to reform.

    It’s the same pretty much down the line. With the broken systems the barrier to fixing them are the people in charge of them. The systems which work get no coverage so no one understands them, and the systems which need reform become knee-jerk political triggers (“Build more prisons? How dare you suggest…”)

    That’s the head-banging-on-the-wall frustrating part.

  • Woodsy

    Zoom, thank you, thank you for reporting on this… I was wondering how it went. As for Larry, maybe it’s time he fired the person who writes this stuff for him!

  • Gabriel, I agree with much of what you say, particularly about a youth treatment centre vs adult. Interesting, too, about the vocational opportunities in the prisons.

    When I’m talking about dealing with the root causes of addiction, though, I’m talking about WAY before prison. I’m talking about preventing addiction by creating a society that does more to ensure that people (especially young people) have what they need – whether it’s mentoring, better role models, recreational opportunities, jobs, education, decent housing, protection from abuse, counseling, physical and mental health care, etc. This includes ensuring that parents have what they need in order to raise healthy kids. I probably should have been clearer about that, but I was definitely talking about prevention.

    Woodsy – my pleasure. Thank you for reading it. :)

  • Carmen

    Thanks, Zoom! Nice write-up!!!

  • Where will the city go with this? My bet is that we’ll see a big ‘ole crack down, the addicts that don’t escape it will be off the streets for a bit, the Mayor will claim immediate victory in a series of new sound bites, and we’ll hear little about it until they are released from jail and the cycle starts all over again.

    As much as they would like it to be so, this is not something that can be addressed by a 3 month jail term – unfortunately you can’t tell them that because most of them don’t think much passed 3 months.

  • Prevention programs, in my opinion, only work in conjunction with or after programs are put in place to fix the people already broken. All of the things you’re talking about, the mentoring programs, the affordable housing, mental health care etc, are already in place. They not available to all the right people yet, but they are there.

    Putting treatments centres in modern, clean prisons would be the most important next step. While we’re doing that we can work on building treatment centres out here, bulding some affordable housing, fixing existing programs while focusing new marketing ideas to educate the public, and expanding education programs in elementary and high schools.

    But, all of that said, the one issue that hasn’t gotten any attention at all in terms of prevention in Canada — preventing people from reoffending and preventing them from carrying on with their addiction — is the actual prison situation. People go in addicted they come out addicted. People go in with no safe support network, they come out with no safe support network. In terms of prevention, when people are in prison and then enter the parole system there is a perfect opportunity to offer them treatment and an education.

    People are getting out of prisons as unemployable and as addicted as they went in, and because prisons today are jammed with gangs they are more likely to come out affiliated with a gang as they were going in… more prisons means less over-crowding. Modern prisons would include proper treatment centres, which means getting people who want treatment and an education out of the prison population which would otherwise keep them addicted and uneducated.

    Again, I agree 100% with you… prevention programs and housing and mental health facilties are all important and they need more funding. But they already exist. The prisons we have today are the near opposite of a prevention tool, but in my opinion they could be the most important prevention tool.

  • I agree with Gabriel, and I want to state that I’m not talking about jailing drug offenders for being drug offenders. I mean people who are going to jail because of those ways drug addicts really affect other people – theft, weapons charges, etc. We need real prison reform that addresses the addictions, mental illnesses, and systemic poverty and abuse and lack of education/options that finds people there.

  • XUP

    Prevention is key, but the road to prevention I don’t think involves just funneling more money into social programs. The best way to prevent drug abuse in the first place, I think is to get drugs out of the hands of organized crime and thereby off the streets. Decriminalize drugs.

    When Holland legalized marijuana in 1976 marijuana use subsequently dropped by 40%.

    This “war on drugs” can’t be won with more regulations, police, prisons, or social programs. Our essential civil liberties should include being free to choose to do stupid things with our bodies like ingesting drugs. We can provide treatment centers for those who want to stop, but we can’t force people to stop being addicts.

    Of course we should continue to work at the root causes of addictions as well: poverty, abuse, mental illness, etc…, but even the best efforts in these areas aren’t enough.

    The continued prohibition of recreational drugs has led and will continue to lead to the same disastrous effects prohibition of alcohol had decades ago: increased addictions, sharp spike in crime; inflated bank balances for mobsters; dangerous products, the perpetuation of poverty, mental illness, abuse, alienation, etc.

  • oma

    I know of a boy, now 19, who suffers from a mental illness and who has become an addict and a thief. His mother tried for many years (since he was 12) to find him help and nothing was available. Now that he has become a more hardened criminal who is in and out of detention, they have finally begun to get treatment for the addiction and for the underlying illness. This boy’s life has been ruined … and his family has been shattered … all because the resources necessary to deal with a problem while it was in its infancy were unavailable.

  • Em

    It’s a shame Larry didn’t give you anything to work with. He’s usually good for an ignorant quip or two.
    Thanks for reporting on this, I’m stuck in my little student bubble and forgot this meeting was happening.

  • Milo

    Here’s a report on Seattle’s solution to chronic alcoholics living on the street:

    http://alcoholism.about.com/b/2007/06/19/housing-for-alcoholics-saves-tax-dollars.htm

  • Jamine

    As someone who is right down there (Cumberland and Clarence) I have to say I appreciate the attention it’s all getting. Mental health issues abound here and in many other places but it’s gotten worse here recently. There are many issues – prevention, education, treatment and more – and now the spotlight is on. Great.

    Legalizing marijuana is quite different than legalizing crack though, as I don’t think a lot of people here didn’t know what they were getting into.

    Looking at root causes and treatment and all of that will help and the immediate situation is that there are hookers at the school bus stop, homeless on my doorstep and crackheads peeing on the stairs to my place in the daylight, and kids can’t play in the grass because there really are needles in there.

    I’ve heard how it’s sad that kids can’t play outside and walk to the store because they’re so over scheduled and protected – and I do consider my choice to live in this ‘hood. As I wrote in a victim impact statement, my daughter won’t know what it’s like to walk home by herself and even taking the dog out for a walk is dodgy.

    Thanks for bringing it up and for going to the meeting.

  • You know, there are so many angles on this issue and I find it fascinating to read/hear where everybody’s coming from. One’s perspective radically alters one’s experience and definition of the drug problem. However you slice it though, a lot of people are putting a lot of thought into this.

    Some of the perspectives: addict, family member or friend of an addict, front line worker, cop, homeowner or parent in drug-entrenched neighbourhood, business owner in drug-entrenched neighbourhood, politician, etc.

    And then you throw in all the different angles it can be approached from – prison reform, public health, crime prevention, gender, class, etc.

    It’s huge.

    I’d love to see more opportunities to talk about it. A two-hour meeting just barely scratches the surface. Maybe a conference – or a virtual conference – would be useful.

  • I love your reporting. It’d have blood pressure up somewhere over the loop of the moon if I tried to sit thru that in real time.

    I did notice a spate of police presence in the market after the meeting. Coincidence?

  • Hey Janine

    I know EXACTLY what you mean, I used to live at 281 Cumberland Street (in between St Patrick and Murray) when my 2 oldest were small, but I still think the drugs are secondary to the mental illness. I lived there from 1997-2003 and I don’t think anything has changed. I wouldn’t doubt its the same hookers at the same school bus stop!

  • I want to state that people who are going to jail because of those ways drug addicts really affect other people – theft, weapons charges, etc. We need real prison reform that addresses the addictions, mental illnesses, and systemic poverty and abuse and lack of education/options that finds people there.
    ———–
    Barbie Purl
    Social Advertiser