The April issue of Elm Street, the Canadian feminista magazine so awful it has to be given away, is now being foisted upon unwitting newspaper subscribers across the country. The current cover story is on the new plan of Vancouver's mayor to do something about drugs. His proposal involves providing better housing for addicts, supervised injection sites, and for those for whom abstinence and methadone are too unpleasant, the beautifully named "heroin maintenance", in which the government not only provides needles and instruction but also the heroin itself, free of charge.
It is telling that the advocates of this plan are all bureaucrats, at best a few steps removed from the actual addicts. Mayor Campbell himself is a former coroner, in which position he saw a great deal of the damage done by drugs but not much at all of the mechanics and psychology of addiction. Those who work directly in the field, whether trying to stop kids from ever starting or trying to save those already entrenched in addiction, tend to be strongly opposed to this plan.
Most of the advocates of this plan are charmingly well-intentioned and amazingly delusional. Perhaps they should study history in an effort to find a single example of a vice that decreased after being made cheaper, safer and more socially acceptable. Canada will have as many addicts, prostitute, criminals and deviants as it is willing to subsidize and accept; Vancouver evidentally can tolerate a lot of them.
Posted by Clio at April 4, 2003 12:38 PM