Subscribe to the print edition and enjoy The Republic in
your bathroom!
Plus, your subscription goes a very long way in helping to support The Republic and its writers and produces. It's like paying for the music you like.
Click here for details
|
Drugs
Inside Insite
The author pays a visit to Vancouver’s supervised safe injection site in search of a fresh perception of this misunderstood issue
By Tavis W Dodds
|
There are some strong opinions out there about Insite, Canada’s only supervised site for substance abuse victims to inject themselves with illegal narcotics. On the previous weekend, I’d attended a huge block party rally for Insite on Carrall Street that shut down traffic for hours with live bands, stilt walkers and a free BBQ.
The enforcement pillar of the drug industry, the police departments, lobbies the governments to shut down the facility. The whole project has survived on six month exemptions to Canada’s drug laws, leaving staff and clients not knowing how long the site will last. Vancouver’s Mayor Sam Sullivan makes statements on both sides of this fence and has even stated that Insite might make the transition to distributing drugs.
I decided to see for myself what Insite is like from the clients’ point of view. So on a rainy Tuesday afternoon, I headed down Hastings Street from Main and entered Insite’s frosted door bedecked with stylized needle logo and window, all set about with dark green trim.
Sickened people sway back and forth, leaning on shopping carts. It smells like industrial cleaner. The room inside the door is like a coat check room for shopping carts—all the worldly possessions of perhaps a dozen people. A man at a desk asks my name. “Ever been here before?” he asks. “No,” I say.
A lady with a clipboard is assigned to give me an orientation. She makes it very clear that nothing must exchange hands in the building. Also, no one can help me inject drugs into myself. They give me a syringe, alcohol swabs, a little metal bowl, and water in tiny blue plastic containers.
The next room is like collaboration between William S Burroughs and H R Geiger. Seats face into stainless steel cubicles built out of the mirrored wall. It’s very bright. A lady at the end spurts blood out of her arm all over her cubicle. There is a big man there whose job it is to watch the injection room, and he wipes up the blood and gives the lady a band-aid.
The glare is so strong it makes you blink at your reflection, which distorts as the drugs take effect or wear off or not work. Research in the downtown eastside shows cocaine use to be as low as 10% and the rest of the drug use to be amphetamine or other chemicals that produce a rush similar to inhalants. The people doing this sort of drug twitch and fiddle with their needles. They are in agony. Once one has been trapped into slavery to this drug there is often nothing left but an all-consuming need for more. These addicts clearly hate the substances they crave. The spastic fidgeting makes them look like poisoned bugs.
Two chairs over from me is an old man, presentably dressed. He’s on heroin, the other drug. He nods slowly, slouching down in the relief of fixing. Heroin hurts when you don’t have it, but now that the old man has had it he seems almost okay. His eyes roll up slightly and he says something about not being allowed to shake hands.
We are ushered out into the next room, a “chill out room.” A man behind a counter hands out styrofoam cups of what looks like soup. On the street outside the green door a police car pulls up next to a cluster of people sheltering from the rain. The police squawk their siren and the crowd quickly disperse. Around the corner, in Blood Alley, people sprawl out in the muck. A woman fills her syringe from a puddle. Others sift through the sludgy buildup everywhere in hopes of finding lost drugs. One woman is particularly spastic, and a tall Jamaican man walking past says to her, “You have to slow down! You’re going to kill yourself if you don’t slow down. Or go to Insite!”
“Go to Insite!” echoes someone else. It’s impossible to tell if the woman hears them.
In the National Post story “Four Blocks of Hell,” and in nearly all the coverage of downtown eastside drug epidemics, the dealers are said to be plying their wares in plain sight, but this is not the reality. It is true that you can see drugs being sold, but this is an industry where the retail level customers serve themselves and the real dealers drive Mercedes. The drug industries, both the illicit one and big pharmaceutical businesses, are trillion-dollar industries. We are meant to believe that an industry this size can be conducted by bike gangs and a few dirty businessmen.
There is a macroeconomic level to this phenomenon and at this level all industries are inextricably linked, from tourism to energy to security. How many degrees away are the real dealers from our elected officials? Both Vancouver and British Columbia have been purchasing rooming houses at way over the assessed value and thereby contributing to real estate hysteria, while giving millions of tax dollars to several companies known to be associated with narcotics distribution.
Crystal meth labs are found in $10 million homes in Jericho Beach. Look to the Four Seasons Hotel for the real dealers, who are there to listen to MLA Lorne Mayencourt present his plan to build forced labour camps for substance abuse victims to detox them in rural environments. The higher we go, the closer to reality we seem to get, until it starts making more sense to believe what the police originally said when they raided the BC Legislature Building, that they were investigating a drug-trafficking ring.
Police later said that they covered up information because it “made the government look bad.” We’d be better to look for truth not in the Basi-Virk trial that has resulted from the unprecedented legislative office raid, but perhaps in the National Film Board production “Citizen Sam”, in which Mayor Sam Sullivan defends having bought crack for a kid to smoke in his van so he, as a concerned leader, could watch the effects.
“Give out free drugs,” Sam jokes in the film, “that’s how to get the homeless vote.” Is this reality? Is the state and financial powers conspiring to suck profits out of a plague whose victims litter the streets? If this is the case, then what can anyone do beyond damage control, or harm reduction? God damn the pusher man!
|
Read more by this author
The Republic
print version is generously supported by the following regular advertisers:
Storm Brewing
604-255-9119
Dan's Homebrewing
692 E Hastings
Co-operative Auto Network
604-685-1393
Turk's Coffee
1276 Commercial Drive
Dutch Girl Chocolates
1002 Commercial Drive
Magpie Books and Magazines
1319 Commercial Drive
Artrageous Pictures & Framing
1256 Commercial Drive
Bouzyos Greek Taverna
1815 Commercial Drive
Magnet Hardware
1575 Commercial Drive
Uprising Breads
1697 Venables
Highlife World Music
1317 Commercial Drive
Mark's Pet Stop
1875 Commercial Drive
Abruzzo Cafe
1321 Commercial Drive
Our Community Bikes
3283 Main Street
Does Your Mother Know
Magazines Etc
2139 West 4th Ave
Kali
1000 Commercial Drive
Uncle Don
Freelance Curmudgen
on CFUR Radio, Prince George
Receptive Earth
Hemp & other Earthly delights
4168 Main Street
Geist
Magazine of Canadian ideas & culture
Momentum
Bike magazine
West Coast Seeds
Where to find the print version of The Republic:
Vancouver
Aboriginal Friendship
1607 E Hastings
Bean Around the World
10th & Trimble
Benny’s Bagels
Broadway & Larch
Big News Coffee Bar
2447 Granville
Black Dog Video
Cambie & 19th
Book Warehouse
550 Granville
632 W Broadway
2388 W 4th
Cambie Hostel
300 Cambie St
Capers Community Markets
2285 W 4th
1675 Robson
Carnegie Comm. Centre
Hastings & Main
City Square Mall
Cambie & 12th
Cuppa Joe 189-175
E Broadway
Dadabase
Broadway & Main
Danny’s Coffee
Denman & Pendrell
Denman Community Ctr
Denman & Nelson
Denman Mall
Denman & Nelson
Drive Organics
Commerical & Napier
Does Your Mother Know?
2139 W 4th
Duthie Books
2239 W 4th
East End Food Co-Op
1034 Commercial
Elysian Room
1778 W 5th
Food Stop
Commerical & Venables
Gemeral Store
312 Cambie St
Gold Coin Laundry
B-way & Waterloo
Granville Island
Public Market
Grind
4124 Main
Higher Ground
Broadway & Vine
Il Mercato
1641 Commercial
Joe's Café
1150 Commercial
Laughing Bean
Hastings & Penticton
Lugz
2525 Main Street
Magpie Magazines
1319 Commercial
Our Town Cafe
245 E Broadway
Pacific Central Station
Bus Depot
People's Co-op Books
1391 Commercial
Polonia Sausage
Nanaimo &Hastings
Rebound Health
Hastings & Kamloops
Receptive Earth
Main & King Edward
Rhizome Cafe
317 East Broadway
Simon Fraser
Downtown Foodfair
Soma
2528 Main Street
Sweet Tooth Cafe
Nanaimo & Hastings
Turk's Coffee
1276 Commercial
UBC
Student Union Building
Union Food Market
810 Union
Uprising Breads Bakery
1697 Venables
Vancouver Community College
250 W Pender
Vancouver Public Library
350 W Georgia
1661 Napier
2425 MacDonald
370 E Broadway
West Vancouver
Capers
2496 Marine Dr
West Vancouver Library
1950 Marine
Duncan
Community Farm Store
330 Duncan St
Victoria
Bean Around the World
533 Fisgard
Munro’s Books
1108 Government
University of Victoria
Graduate L0unge
Victoria Public Library
735 Broughton
Powell River
River City Coffee
4801 Joyce
Local Loco’s Music & Arts Cafe
Flying Yellow Breadbowl
4698 Ewing
Powell River Library
4411 Michigan
Kaslo
Blue Belle Bistro
302 Fourth
SunnySide Naturals
404 Front
Nanaimo
Nanaimo Public Library
Harbourfront Br
Port Place Shopping Ctr
650 S Terminal
The Green Store
Port Place
Mermaid’s Mug
357 Wesley St
Nelson
Mountain Pass Imports
402 Baker
Toronto
Moonbean Cafe
30 St. Andrew St
Future Bakery
483 Bloor St West
Oakville Peace &Ecology Centre
148 Kerr
|
The Republic of East Vancouver masthead
The Republic of East Vancouver supports no party, advocates
for no cause, represents no group, serves no master, and considers
problems with no preconceived notions. We hope to afflict the comfortable,
both materially and intellectually, and comfort the afflicted—of
both kinds as well, and we are trying to do both things at the same
time.
Publisher, Editor
Kevin Potvin
Managing Editor
Kara Foreman
Copy Editor
Janis Harper
Website
Chris Lavigne
Advertising
Chris Richmond Kevin
Potvin
Support
Dan Crawford, John Daigle,
Jack Etkin, Janis Harper, Carl Johnson, Hilary Jones, Chris King,
James Mecham, Albrecht Meyers, Peter Miller, James Pope
Contributors in this and recent issues
Bruce Alexander, Dan Adleman, Toby Alford, Kevin Annett, Santo Barbieri, Bob Broughton, Mike Bryan, Stephen Buckley, Matthew Burrows, Maria Calleja, Ron Carton, Chad Christie, Joshua Corber, Dan Crawford, Gail Davidson, Eric Doherty, Joe Donaldson, Lorena Jara Patty Ducharme, Shadia Drury, Taivo Evard, Reed Eurchuk, Farnaz Fassihi, Thomas Feakins, Anthony Fenton, Reza Fiyouyzat, Andrew Gordon Fleming, Ryan Fugger, Sasha Gagic, Matt Goody, Guy Hawkins, Spencer Herbert, John Irwin, Nick Istvaniffy, Junius, William Kay, Mike Keep, Kate Kennedy, Donald Kropp, Chris LaVigne, James Lindfield, Brian Lindgreen, Karen Litzke, Keith MacKenzie, Michael McLaughlin, Sonya McRae, Rafe Mair, Sonia Marino, Jennifer Matsui, Michael Millard, Isaebel Minty, Michael Nenonen, Wendy Nylund, Derrick O’Keefe, Stephen Osborne, Sean Orr, Evan Augustine Pederson III, Stephen Peplow, Kim Peterson, Kevin Potvin, Mary Rawson, Andrea Reimer, Erin Riley, Phil Rockstroh, Becky Scott, Jason Scott, Chris Shaw, Jeff Steudel, Alex Tegart, Scott Turner, Elbio Grosso Trentini, Patrick Vert, Chris Walker, Sean Wilkinson, Brad Zembic
For comments or suggestions, please contact the
Republic Webmaster
|
