The Emperor's New Clothes - And The Mayor's True Colors (originally posted Feb 18/08)

If you dig back to one of the very first entries on this blog, you'll find a little mini-rant about the (in)effectiveness of Vancouver's "safe" injection site (dubbed "InSite" in deference to the play on words and of course, the 21st Century penchant for words with capital letters in the middle).

Put succinctly, THEY DON'T WORK -- unless, of course, their purpose is to let drug addicts die, and decrease the surplus population. The InSite supporters, in a lovely bit of Orwellianism, have defined their own success: no one has actually overdosed and/or died in the facility itself. To my mind -- having hung with some people this morning who were smoking crack outside the showers facility -- the measure of success of any program to deal with drug addicts is whether they get off the drugs, not whether they don't die on the facility property.

But there are some areas where you can set your own "industry standard" after the fact. Not long after I posted that entry, I said something similar in an interview on OMNI 10 TV. So far, I have not awakened to find a horse's head in my bed, courtesy InSite (perhaps another part of the anatomy would be more appropriate). One must admit ... it's a little like the kid in The Emperor's New Clothes ... everyone has been conditioned to believe that InSite is the answer to the drug problem -- harm reduction, in other words, ignoring the Hippocratic oath to "do no harm", not "do less harm than something else might" -- so anyone who says that InSite is NOT the answer is immediately suspected of standing in the way of a perfectly good ... well ... theory.

The latest development in this saga comes from Dan Rather. He Who Took Over Walter's Chair was in Vancouver recently, doing a documentary on the DTES, and InSite in particular. According to the Vancouver Sun, Mayor Sam Sullivan -- billed as "the first quadriplegic mayor of a major world city" -- is interviewed. According to Glenn Bohn's article in the Sun ... "I have talked to many people with drug addictions, and they all want to be healthy," says the mayor, who has confirmed that, before he was mayor, he bought heroin for a female prostitute and bought crack for a man and allowed the user to smoke the crack in Sullivan's van.

"They all want to be clean," the mayor says. "I tell you: I do not want to be a quadriplegic. I would do anything to stand up, but that's not gonna happen. That's not my life. So, I need help managing my disability, just like those people with drug addictions need help managing their disability." (Italics are mine.)

Excuse me? Mayor Sam, suggesting it's just as likely for someone to recover from drug addiction as it is for him to get up out of his wheelchair? Well, he's right ... but not in the way he thinks. The translation of the above statement? Drug addicts can forget about ever recovering. Drug addicts: THE MAYOR OF VANCOUVER HAS WRITTEN YOU OFF! He's given up on them. No sense trying to heal them of their addiction: just help them "manage" it.

Help them "manage" going through life as zombies, because they made a wrong turn somewhere.

Help them "manage" being the detritus of society, because no one wants to get down and dirty and tackle the real problem. Help them "manage" being shifted from lousy hotel to shelter to the streets to some other community where they won't be a liability to a world class city on the international stage. But recover? Get over the addiction? Not as far as Sam's concerned.

AND GOD SAID, "I HAVE NOT GIVEN UP ON YOU! MY SON DID NOT GIVE UP ON YOU, AND WILL NOT GIVE UP ON YOU AS LONG AS THERE IS A HEAVEN AND EARTH AND THE SUN AND THE STARS! MY SON TOOK THE LASHES SO THAT YOU COULD BE HEALED! "

And what is Sam saying? "Ehh ... Jesus was wasting His time ..."

?

God can heal addictions ... and does heal addictions ... and has healed addictions. The trick is to shut up the people who are being the instruments of Satan, parrotting the line that the addicts can't be healed, and to get enough people to tell them that they can be healed and they deserve to be healed and God wants them healed. That was true 2000 years ago and it's true today.

This brings us to the irony of Mayor Sam's statement, likening their addiction to his affliction. What happened at the Beautiful Gate when Peter and John met the lame man? Peter said, "In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!" And what happened then? So indeed: Mayor Sam's disability is just as heal-able as drug addiction. All he needs to do is reach up and expect to receive something. Hmm ...