Yesterday, we posted a rant about drugs on the Downtown East Side, in which I noted that, while the US War on Drugs has been, by many accounts, unsuccessful, Canada's apparent "peace treaty" with drugs has hardly wrestled the problem into submission, either. This brought a considered response, and with the permission of the writer (who's asked to remain anonymous), I'm posting it here.
Usually I read your emails and always find some inspiring message in part or in whole . Today I found it interesting that the usual message of salvation and GODs work took on a political tone speaking to the issue of the drug problem. As I consider myself somewhat of an expert I felt compelled to respond.
As someone who has personally experienced the US federal penal system I would like to educate you a bit as I constantly see misinformation being put forward. First I would start off by saying the US policy on drugs has been a complete failure and my opinion is in accordance with many groups , politicians and even federal US magistrates. The US incarcerates more people per capita that any other country in the world for non-violent drug offenses. This leads me to my second point, the US prison system is more and more being privatized in an effort to enrich individuals that under the guise of saving the tax payers a small amount of money, have almost cut off basic services health care,dental and definitely any and all forms of programs designed to rehabilitate offenders and actually does the exact opposite by seizing all assets of people, alienating them from family and loves ones by placing undue burdens on them in respect to where they are serving their time usually 500 miles from their home.
I say usually cause that is the policy of the USBOP (United States Bureau of Prisons. I am very concerned here with the Conservative party taking steps to emulate them. We have to first of all accept someone using drugs (including alcohol, cigarettes and caffeine ) included is a consentual crime . Can we expect the Canadian government to legislate morality. isn't that defeating the purpose of exactly why GOD has put us here and given us FREE WILL . Aren't we responsible for the choices we make ? Why are we always looking for someone to blame ie the drug sellers . Isn't a simple case of supply and demand ? Would there be a supply if there was no demand?
I think our generation and maybe our society is too easy to blame others for our actions. I also find it ironic that the real problem the alcohol and cigarettes and prescription drugs get little to no mention even though the evidence supports that alcohol and tobacco alone kill more people every year than all other illegal drugs combined. So doesn't that make the provincial and federal governments the biggest traffickers of all. Not to mention the huge multi-national drug companies that fly under the radar and to the contrary boast of their multi-billion dollar fortunes. Hasn't prohibition taught us anything ?
Can't we look at modern examples in Europe and see that decriminalizing has stabilized the new youth wanting to experiment with the banned substances and moreover provide these substances in a clean safe place. The fact that they treat it as a health issue and realize that the people will steal, rob and worse to get it accept that although this is controversial, it actually saves the tax payers in the end.I think we get a mixed message here whether it is viewed as a health or criminal issue and personally would like to see the spaces in prison used for violent offenders and pedophiles.
The fact the federal government is using tax dollars to in effect to try and shut down alternative programs the safe needled injection site for example proves this theory, and would only compound the problem with the transmission of diseases, HIV AIDS to name a few seems quite ironic to me. Can we not be resigned that a percentage of people will continue to use no matter what programs or treatment options are offered. This may sound pessimistic to some , but I see it as realistic. I personally grew up in a home where alcohol destroyed mine and my siblings childhood and although the media like to glorify the DTES drug problems I find little to no mention of this huge problem.
After living in Rio De Janeiro Brasil i was shocked to see that the standard police stance there was to exterminate the problem literally, i still find that so cruel that it is almost unimaginable and it has done little to nothing to curb the problem. Even under the assumed penalty of death , the youths are not discouraged and have little to no alternative. The human being is capable of extraordinary things when faced with hunger, starvation or the difference of a their child dying if they aren't able to provide a simple medicine that we take for granted here, but there means the possibility of life or death. Do we want to follow that example I think not.
Usually a country in part can be measured on how they treat their incarcerated . I consider myself very fortunate to be born a Canadian citizen and be afforded these rights ands freedoms that my forefathers fought and died for and would consider it a national tragedy to follow any part of the the US judicial system or any example or policy for that matter. We are a sovereign nation and we shouldn't look at their many failed examples as a guideline.
In closing i would like to add that it is my opinion that the media play an intregal part in perpetuating this problem in an attempt to sell advertising space and newspapers and the facts suggest we are still a very safe place to reside in relation to other North American cities and worldwide for that matter.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Monday, April 27, 2009
It's the drugs, stupid!
Every so often, I get gobsmacked with the reason why we're doing what we're doing at Gospel Mission / The Lord's Rain. It reminds me of the need in the area -- and indeed, any area savaged by drugs and poverty, and those areas are becoming more numerous all the time -- and how we're evidently in the right place and the right time.
This past Saturday morning was an utter zoo at the Lord's Rain -- and I apologize to any cheetahs, wildebeests, lowland gorillas and giant cockroaches from the Brazilian rainforests that might be reading this. It was directly after Welfare Wednesday, a day when the drug traffic takes a sudden spike. People who came into The Lord's Rain were incoherent. One man, visiting us for the first time, sat on a chair, drinking coffee and talking to himself -- or to me, it was hard to tell; equally hard to tell was the language he was speaking -- and bursting out laughing from time to time. Davona, who's become a regular (and Danilo insists is not on drugs but is "only" seriously mentally ill), spent her time talking to herself and trying on piece after piece of donated clothing; while two others, Debbie and Shelley, were dancing the Pigeon Park Gavotte -- that sort-of wavering music-less shuffle that you see many people doing on the streets in the Hastings and Carrall area -- often with a cup of coffee in one hand.
Some others, who were not on drugs -- like Charlotte and Brendan, a homeless couple in their 30s, and a pair of Quebecois men who are also regulars -- simply sat and laughed at the floor show they were getting for free. It was hard not to laugh, even though we were watching the effects that drugs have on people who, at one time or another, had been beautiful, bright people with a world of promise in front of them.
Across the street, the drug deals were going down. I had come down the night before to lock up after the Friday night service, and spent some time sitting in my car, watching the scene. Lookouts were standing oh-so-casually at each end of the alley across from Gospel Mission. They're very effective at what they do: in the past, I've seen a whole herd of buyers and sellers in the alley vanish into thin air about 30 seconds before a couple of police officers stroll past. As we left The Lord's Rain on Saturday morning, one cop was zip-strapping two of those same lookouts and waiting for his backup to arrive. We said a quiet prayer of thanks and protection for the officer.
Then came Saturday night, and the regular service at Gospel Mission. It was a good crowd, and an unusual message -- based on Shakespeare's Sonnet XXIX. All these years, I'd assumed he'd been writing to a girl, but after reading an interesting theory that Shakespeare (or whoever wrote the works attributed to a certain gentleman farmer and actor from Stratford-Upon-Avon) was also on King James I's Bible translation team, it hit me between the eyes that he was writing it about Jesus. The message also spun off into a look at the implications of Jesus' assertion that He will come "as a thief in the night", and Jeremiah's description (49:9) that when a thief breaks in, he trashes the place and doesn't leave anything behind. So it will be when Jesus returns.
But the message was punctuated with outbursts from one fellow off at the side. I'd met him earlier in the year at The Lord's Rain: his name is Joseph, and he came in that morning stinking drunk and wanting to find the part in the Bible that lists the Seven Deadly Sins. There is no such reference: according to Wikipedia, the Seven Deadly Sins were listed by the 4th Century monk, Evagrius Ponticus. But what became apparent as we talked was that he knew Scripture, was incredibly intelligent, but for whatever reason was busily drinking his life away.
I usually cut people a lot of slack, but Joseph reached the end of my patience when he made a personal remark about one of the other guys there, and I warned him that if he made one more outburst, he'd be out of there without supper. He quietened down, then lay down on the pew and went to sleep.
The message ended, we served supper, and as people were lining up for seconds, I realized Joseph was still asleep. I went over to wake him, and he wouldn't budge. He was breathing, but absolutely un-wakable. John, who, two weeks before, had woken up to find his roommate dead on the kitchen floor, checked for a pulse, and that's when we saw the staples in Joseph's scalp. Someone said, "call 9-1-1", and I did. Fritz, one of the regulars, helped me roll Joseph onto his back.
The firefighters were first to arrive. "Oh, look," one of them said, "it's the chain guy!" Apparently, Joseph had been whacked in the head with a chain the day before and these same firefighters had treated him. They managed to rouse him just as the paramedics got there.
Joseph basically was OK -- except for being drunk and drugged and having a dozen staples holding his head together. The paramedics got out of him that he'd smoked rock cocaine earlier, on top of the booze. They checked his vital signs, took a blood sugar test, and packed up and left. I gave Joseph his hamburger, some cookies and a glass of Coke, and we talked.
"You need to spend more time here," I told him. "You know your Scripture, man." He laughed. I pressed the point. "I'm serious: you could be an awesome witness to others."
One of the things about Joseph is his quick laugh and a wry sense of humor. I walked with him down the stairs -- going ahead of him in case he fell. Not surprisingly, he pretended to fall. We laughed. He left in the direction of Pigeon Park, and I truly hope he comes back -- and often.
But I went back upstairs wanting to break something. Joseph was just the most recent in a long list of people that day, who were beautiful, intelligent, worth no less in God's eyes than you or I, and who had been written off by society. "Let them have their drugs -- who cares?" That's the attitude that comes off so much of the approach our society takes. But who's counted the cost here? Look at the resources deployed when we called about Joseph: three firefighters, four paramedics, two ambulances and a fire truck -- all to deal with someone who was drunk and on drugs. What if someone had had a heart attack, or there'd been a fire, or a building collapse, or a traffic accident, with those seven people and three vehicles tied up?
It's the drugs, stupid!
In Canada, we take great delight in sneering at the United States, and one of these exercises in smugness has been to declare that the War on Drugs has "failed". But what are the fruits of Canada's "peace treaty" with drugs?
If you need an answer to that rhetorical question, look at the multiple black eyes Vancouver has received over the past decade for the state of poverty in the shadow of such opulence. The further our city gets away from God, the more frequent and painful those black eyes will become.
Neither approach has been a resounding success. "Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it." With Jesus reduced to Just Another World View (and a politically-incorrect one at that), people have tried to go ahead without God's guidance.
That's why The Lord's Rain and Gospel Mission are in the place they're supposed to be in. One reason has been for us to be a refuge for people on the street -- especially those who need an ambulance. But more than that, we've noted before that the history of Gospel Mission has involved its being established in advance of various social catastrophes that have required its services. When the church moved to 331 Carrall Street in the 1940s, who would have predicted that Pigeon Park would be the fulcrum of despair that it started becoming in the 60s. More than that, it's directly in the face of the worst alley in the city for open-air drug dealing, and establishing The Lord's Rain on the ground floor has given us an up-close-and-personal view -- and no end of people to pray over and minister to.
This past Saturday morning was an utter zoo at the Lord's Rain -- and I apologize to any cheetahs, wildebeests, lowland gorillas and giant cockroaches from the Brazilian rainforests that might be reading this. It was directly after Welfare Wednesday, a day when the drug traffic takes a sudden spike. People who came into The Lord's Rain were incoherent. One man, visiting us for the first time, sat on a chair, drinking coffee and talking to himself -- or to me, it was hard to tell; equally hard to tell was the language he was speaking -- and bursting out laughing from time to time. Davona, who's become a regular (and Danilo insists is not on drugs but is "only" seriously mentally ill), spent her time talking to herself and trying on piece after piece of donated clothing; while two others, Debbie and Shelley, were dancing the Pigeon Park Gavotte -- that sort-of wavering music-less shuffle that you see many people doing on the streets in the Hastings and Carrall area -- often with a cup of coffee in one hand.
Some others, who were not on drugs -- like Charlotte and Brendan, a homeless couple in their 30s, and a pair of Quebecois men who are also regulars -- simply sat and laughed at the floor show they were getting for free. It was hard not to laugh, even though we were watching the effects that drugs have on people who, at one time or another, had been beautiful, bright people with a world of promise in front of them.
Across the street, the drug deals were going down. I had come down the night before to lock up after the Friday night service, and spent some time sitting in my car, watching the scene. Lookouts were standing oh-so-casually at each end of the alley across from Gospel Mission. They're very effective at what they do: in the past, I've seen a whole herd of buyers and sellers in the alley vanish into thin air about 30 seconds before a couple of police officers stroll past. As we left The Lord's Rain on Saturday morning, one cop was zip-strapping two of those same lookouts and waiting for his backup to arrive. We said a quiet prayer of thanks and protection for the officer.
Then came Saturday night, and the regular service at Gospel Mission. It was a good crowd, and an unusual message -- based on Shakespeare's Sonnet XXIX. All these years, I'd assumed he'd been writing to a girl, but after reading an interesting theory that Shakespeare (or whoever wrote the works attributed to a certain gentleman farmer and actor from Stratford-Upon-Avon) was also on King James I's Bible translation team, it hit me between the eyes that he was writing it about Jesus. The message also spun off into a look at the implications of Jesus' assertion that He will come "as a thief in the night", and Jeremiah's description (49:9) that when a thief breaks in, he trashes the place and doesn't leave anything behind. So it will be when Jesus returns.
But the message was punctuated with outbursts from one fellow off at the side. I'd met him earlier in the year at The Lord's Rain: his name is Joseph, and he came in that morning stinking drunk and wanting to find the part in the Bible that lists the Seven Deadly Sins. There is no such reference: according to Wikipedia, the Seven Deadly Sins were listed by the 4th Century monk, Evagrius Ponticus. But what became apparent as we talked was that he knew Scripture, was incredibly intelligent, but for whatever reason was busily drinking his life away.
I usually cut people a lot of slack, but Joseph reached the end of my patience when he made a personal remark about one of the other guys there, and I warned him that if he made one more outburst, he'd be out of there without supper. He quietened down, then lay down on the pew and went to sleep.
The message ended, we served supper, and as people were lining up for seconds, I realized Joseph was still asleep. I went over to wake him, and he wouldn't budge. He was breathing, but absolutely un-wakable. John, who, two weeks before, had woken up to find his roommate dead on the kitchen floor, checked for a pulse, and that's when we saw the staples in Joseph's scalp. Someone said, "call 9-1-1", and I did. Fritz, one of the regulars, helped me roll Joseph onto his back.
The firefighters were first to arrive. "Oh, look," one of them said, "it's the chain guy!" Apparently, Joseph had been whacked in the head with a chain the day before and these same firefighters had treated him. They managed to rouse him just as the paramedics got there.
Joseph basically was OK -- except for being drunk and drugged and having a dozen staples holding his head together. The paramedics got out of him that he'd smoked rock cocaine earlier, on top of the booze. They checked his vital signs, took a blood sugar test, and packed up and left. I gave Joseph his hamburger, some cookies and a glass of Coke, and we talked.
"You need to spend more time here," I told him. "You know your Scripture, man." He laughed. I pressed the point. "I'm serious: you could be an awesome witness to others."
One of the things about Joseph is his quick laugh and a wry sense of humor. I walked with him down the stairs -- going ahead of him in case he fell. Not surprisingly, he pretended to fall. We laughed. He left in the direction of Pigeon Park, and I truly hope he comes back -- and often.
But I went back upstairs wanting to break something. Joseph was just the most recent in a long list of people that day, who were beautiful, intelligent, worth no less in God's eyes than you or I, and who had been written off by society. "Let them have their drugs -- who cares?" That's the attitude that comes off so much of the approach our society takes. But who's counted the cost here? Look at the resources deployed when we called about Joseph: three firefighters, four paramedics, two ambulances and a fire truck -- all to deal with someone who was drunk and on drugs. What if someone had had a heart attack, or there'd been a fire, or a building collapse, or a traffic accident, with those seven people and three vehicles tied up?
It's the drugs, stupid!
In Canada, we take great delight in sneering at the United States, and one of these exercises in smugness has been to declare that the War on Drugs has "failed". But what are the fruits of Canada's "peace treaty" with drugs?
If you need an answer to that rhetorical question, look at the multiple black eyes Vancouver has received over the past decade for the state of poverty in the shadow of such opulence. The further our city gets away from God, the more frequent and painful those black eyes will become.
Neither approach has been a resounding success. "Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it." With Jesus reduced to Just Another World View (and a politically-incorrect one at that), people have tried to go ahead without God's guidance.
That's why The Lord's Rain and Gospel Mission are in the place they're supposed to be in. One reason has been for us to be a refuge for people on the street -- especially those who need an ambulance. But more than that, we've noted before that the history of Gospel Mission has involved its being established in advance of various social catastrophes that have required its services. When the church moved to 331 Carrall Street in the 1940s, who would have predicted that Pigeon Park would be the fulcrum of despair that it started becoming in the 60s. More than that, it's directly in the face of the worst alley in the city for open-air drug dealing, and establishing The Lord's Rain on the ground floor has given us an up-close-and-personal view -- and no end of people to pray over and minister to.
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