EVIL PURVEYORS FEEDING OFF MISERY
The following article gives an amazing overview of the service industry being built around the heroin and cocaine that are being shipped - by the ton - into the country unobstructed.
It's just like war where the mongers make billions of dollars supplying the weapons that destroy the nations; then make billions of dollars re-building* those very same destroyed nations. That must be why they CALL it War On Drugs. Actually, a more accurate description would be War By Drugs.
War is a money-making racket at both ends. Except for the soldiers, addicts and society, that is. But I guess we're collateral damage. ~ Jackie Jura
Detox facilities to cost millions
Safe injection site will create huge demand for treatment: health region
Frances Bula, Vancouver Sun, May 05, 2003
The biggest cost of a supervised-injection site for users isn't necessarily the $1.7 million needed to run the site every year. It's the demand it will create for treatment.
Health planners from the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority say a minimum of about $8.6 million in new services, including detox, methadone, housing, day treatment and counselling, should really be added to take care of the new clients who will want to get treatment after going to an injection site. "People would be surprised at how little there is in the way of treatment in Vancouver now," said Ida Goodreau, the CEO of the health authority, which is responsible for strengthening two of the pillars -- treatment and harm reduction -- in Vancouver's ambitious "four pillars" drug-addiction strategy. "We don't have enough for the population that is in need." She said the lack of treatment, especially for young people, is the most glaring gap in the city's addiction services.
Planners estimate a Downtown Eastside injection site would attract about 1,000 users a day and about two per cent of them would ask for referrals to some kind of treatment. Those numbers are based on the trends they have seen at the contact centre, a year-old drop-in facility on Hastings Street the health authority operates for drug addicts. While two per cent might seem low, that's 20 new people a day, day after day, who would be entering the system. Those people would also likely come from a different sector of the drug-user population -- those who are less functional and more street-oriented. Studies of other injection sites in Europe and Australia have shown that such sites, which do not demand a commitment to abstinence, tend to attract new people to treatment who haven't been reached in other ways.
Heather Hay, director of health services for the Downtown Eastside, said the authority's addictions team estimated the minimum level of new services needed would include:
? $2.3 million for 18 new detox beds added to the current 54, which would be targeted for women and young adults. Vancouver's two detox sites are currently at capacity, with a wait list of three to five days.
? $1.1 million for new methadone services for the up to 2,000 new clients expected. The authority would like to add a "low-threshold" methadone service that has fewer rules and is therefore more accessible to people who are less functional.
? $1.8 million for temporary shelter beds above the injection site, where people can be stabilized for a short term.
? $1 million for day treatment services that would be targeted, as are the rest of the services, to this group of street-living addicts. The money would allow for 400 new adult clients and 200 new younger addicts in the 16- to 24-year-old range. Currently, there is a nine-week waiting list in the Downtown Eastside for day treatment.
? $1.4 million for counselling services.
Goodreau said the $1.7 million estimate of the annual cost of the injection site by itself is based on the model of the site in Sydney, Australia, where the drug-using population is most like that in Vancouver. And, she said, although there have been some questions about that budget estimate, with Mayor Larry Campbell suggesting the authority could run a leaner operation, Goodreau said the current budget the authority has developed would cover just the most basic staffing level and would allow the site to be open only 18 hours a day. The $1.7 million would allow for one registered nurse, one licensed practical nurse, and one alcohol and drug counsellor to be present at all times, along with some auxiliary staff from the drug-user community who would help greet people, get their registrations filled in, and provide the kind of peer contact that would encourage addicts to use the site.
"Our experience has been that it's much better if users are involved," Hay said.
Ideally, the health authority would like to add many more services than that and its addiction team developed a comprehensive, ideal, $56-million-a-year plan last September as a starting point for talking about what the city needed. That three-year plan envisions expanding or creating dozens of services, from housing to youth outreach, counselling and residential-treatment services to a new medical cocaine unit to six supervised-consumption facilities.
But even the smallest start any of that -- the first injection site, the wraparound services to the site, or the entire Cadillac plan --has been stalled as the health authority tries to figure out where to get the money. "The biggest issue for us now is funding," Goodreau said. The authority's annual budget is $1.9 billion, but that has to cover all health services from the Sunshine Coast to Vancouver and Richmond, which includes one million people and 12 hospitals. That budget has been frozen for the next three years. Goodreau said the authority is looking at the most effective way inside its region of delivering services, to see if it can find savings. It is also looking for money from either private sources or other government sources outside the region. The Vancouver Agreement -- the three-government initiative aimed at restoring the economic and physical health of the Downtown Eastside -- currently has $20 million from federal and provincial contributions but no one has said what is going to be done with that money.
Another possibility is Health Canada or medical-research institutes, to help with the $500,000 cost of doing a full evaluation of the injection site, which Health Canada will require as part of its permission to operate the country's first injection site. Goodreau said she expects the Health Canada approval to come through at the beginning of May, 60 days from the date the authority put in its application. Although Health Canada staff had some questions recently about the application, Goodreau said she got no indication from them that approval would be delayed.
Vancouver police moved ahead with their "enforcement pillar" of the four-pillar plan last week, putting 40 extra officers into the Downtown Eastside to break up the open drug market.
Afghan poppy harvest at record level (cheap heroin for UK streets) & Police want heroin injection sites (5,000 users in downtown Vancouver). Times/CBC, Aug 19, 2006. Go to
Prisons offer needles to inmates (to inject illegal heroin). National Post, Nov 11, 2005. Go to 34.Ministry of Love (Torture) & 22.Doublethink (mental condition: controlled insanity) Epidemic among London drug users (gov't to give free needles for heroin "to reduce harm" from HIV/HepC). Guardian, Nov 12, 2004. Go to 22.Doublethink & DRUG WAR & PEACE CRACK KITS HIT STREET (hundreds handed out in Vancouver - ok'd by mayor, police & health authorities; contain glass crack pipe & mouthpiece-push stick-draw screens-matches-alcohol swabs-Vaseline-bandages-a condom & smoking instructions). The Province, Nov 1, 2004. Go to 23.Proles & 35.Brotherhood & DRUG WAR & PEACE Iraq a colonial war (in tradition of Opium Wars). Toronto Star, May 4, 2003 DRUG WAR & PEACE & IN AFGHAN FIELDS * Welcome aboard gravy train (greatest rebuilding on earth!). London Observer, Apr 13, 2003 35.The Brotherhood and 23.The Proles and 22.Doublethink and 11.Ministry of Plenty (Starvation) and 34.Ministry of Love (Torture) Jackie Jura email: orwelltoday@gmail.com
~ an independent researcher monitoring local, national and international events ~
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