In Which We Realize The Answer: A New Municipality of "Smackville."

The Vancouver Sun reports today that there are 15,000 drug injections occuring every day in the city's heroin hot zone, called the Downtown Eastside, but the government's safe injection site can handle only 600 a day. Now, police are saying they will arrest the many, many drug users shooting up outdoors. This has prompted an outcry from the injecting drug users lobbying and services group, called Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users - VANDU.

Arresting people for not using the site when it is already at capacity doesn't make sense, VANDU program coordinator Ann Livingston said. "If there is some logic...they better let us know what it is because we're not grasping it," Livingston said.

I don't suppose upholding the law upon which the arrests will be based is much justification, as it has been rendered moot by the compassionate clientized state, and the flocking of heroin addicts - who just can't wait, see - to Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

More from The Sun:

VANDU will be protesting the crackdown at noon today in the 100-block of East Hastings, with placards and handouts to inform the public that the real solution is opening more safe injection sites. "We don't need this kind of harassment by the police," Livingston said. "We need their support politically to get more safe sites."

I expect this will occur. After all, you can't really expect much from the ongoing government-funded program to wean addicts from heroin with....government-supplied heroin, also known as the North American Opiate Medication Initiative, or NAOMI.

There was once this quaint theory called "broken windows," that turned NYC from a hellhole back into a thriving metropolis. It's based on the idea that even the smallest signs of disorder, such as loose trash and litter on the streets, or, literally, ignored broken windows - not to mention rampant public heroin injection - must be addressed and curtailed, or far worse things will follow. As you'll see at the bottom here in my "related links," Vancouver's crime problem is severe, and police tie it closely to the city's drug culture.

Another story, from CBC today, adds to the unmistakable sense addicts feel entitled to shoot up, publicly, in Vancouver.

Inspector Bob Rolls says the aim is to steer addicts to the injection site. There are thousands of users in the Downtown Eastside, but other people still have to work and live in the neighbourhood, he says. He recalls one complaint from a volunteer at a community centre: "The woman was stretched out on the steps and she was shooting a needle into her neck. When the volunteer complained, she lashed out at her – how dare she interfere with her when she just managed to get this needle in the right position to inject?"

Diane Tobin, 54, who shoots up at the injection site three times a day, says the site is already at capacity and it's time to talk about opening another. And because rules state that addicts have to inject themselves, it means people who need help shooting up are out on the street where they face arrest. "If that cubbyhole is your home and you're sleeping there and all your stuff is there and that's where you're using," she says, "they're actually coming into your home and arresting you for possession of a needle."

So what's left? A lotta junkies still on the street in the Downtown Eastside, even with one or two more safe injection centers. Just do the math. Maybe the future holds a "safe injection district" for Vancouver, as opposed to a few measly more safe injection sites. They could cordon off the whole Downtown Eastside and declare it strictly legal to shoot drugs anywhere outdoors there, but not anywhere else in the city. Perhaps the junkies and their social service enablers could actually secede, and establish their own municipality and tax base.

Yeah, that'd be the real cure. How about it, Vancouver?

Two recent related Rosenblog posts:

"Crime-plagued Vancouver at Crossroads;"

"A Sane Mayor For Vancouver."

TECHNORATI TAGS: VANCOUVER, HEROIN, ARRESTS, SAFE INJECTION SITE, ADDICTION

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Posted by Matt Rosenberg at November 29, 2005 05:40 PM