„Drugs are bad, you shouldn't do drugs, mkay“ (Mr Mackey, South Park) But if you have to do (hard) drugs, you should at least have access to clean drugs and syringes and supervised consumption sites. Jeff told me on the last day we rode that a lot of drug users are dying of overdoses in Vancouver (1422 in 20171). One of the many problems, which lead to the high number of casualties, ist the so called „red zoning“. This means some of the drug users are banned from Downtown, so that the consumption sites in Downtown aren't available for them3, while the presence of police patrols in Downtown Eastside has been increased in 2018, which scares drug users from using the consumption sites 1. The result is that they consume their drugs unsupervised at home. This prevents the possibility of getting fast (life saving) help in case of an overdose. Testing the Drugs for contamination and distributing medicinal heroin or hydromorphone pills (a pharmaceutical narcotic derived from morphine) 2 are two ways of improving the situation. There is one hospital in Vancouve which distributes substitutes, but it isn't really practical for a lot of the drug users 2. Besides the two short term solution, the long term goal has to be the decriminalization of the drugs. This proved good results, in cooperation with other measures, in Portugal4. Since I'm from from Berlin I am used to see people taking a leak on the street or addicts taking their breakfast in public, but I didn't expect to see this in Vancouver. I walked once or twice through Downtown Eastside and was a little bit shocked to see this. 1
http://vancouversun.com/health/local-health/advocates-vancouver-policesweeps-put-drug-users-in-danger 2 http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/how-opioid-vending-machines-couldfix-vancouvers-drug-crisis/ 3 http://www.metronews.ca/news/vancouver/2018/02/20/vancouver-drug-usersdemand-decriminalization.html 4 https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/05/portugals-radical-drugspolicy-is-working-why-hasnt-the-world-copied-it Note: This Text was written from late 2017 till march 2018. That is why latest changes in the canadian drug policy are not included.