Just When You Thought it Couldn't Get Any Worse

B.C. health minister George Abbott announced today(Fri.Feb.15'08)that the old Willingdon Juvenile Detention Center was to be re-fitted with 100 new beds and put back in use to deal with those unfortunate souls that run afoul of the "new" drug court his government is opening in Burnaby this summer.The claim is that this will be exclusively for people with multiple barriers such as addiction and mental illness.We had drug courts in B.C. back in the seventies to deal with the so called runaway drug problem of the day.There was also an attempt to make addiction itself a criminal act and the fact that a person was an addict was to be reason enough to lock them up till a cure was found or they died.Needless to say the program didn't meet even the barest necessity for proof required to pass such an abomination and several addicts,myself included,attended every meeting and asked questions they couldn't answer.The plan was dropped within weeks of it's being announced.This has the same bad smell that that legislation had and it will be very surprising if they don't succumb to the temptation to solve the drug problem by simply locking everyone up.The support for this program was from a group of select politicians that went to Europe and came back saying that they had found a program with a success rate of 70%.As usual the evidence was 100% anecdotal but that didn't stop the government from throwing money at the project.Surrey mayor Dianne Watts was one of the main proponents of this project.Watts thinks harm reduction is a diet plan and supports all things prohibition with the blind faith of the believer.Willingdon is an old institution with a terrible legacy of lost youth and criminal abuse that destroyed most that entered it's door.This is another waste of tax dollars on a program with nothing new to offer and as Mr.Abbott himself was quoted as saying;"will probably have to hold some for the rest of their lives".The people that this is aimed at are not the criminals that are doing the drive by shootings or the contract killings.This is an effort to put away problem people that should be given the treatment they need and not have them locked away from sight where they won't annoy the tourists.Forced treatment and that is what this is,has never been successful anywhere it's been tried.This is taking money away from legitimate treatment and throwing it down the drug war toilet with all the other failed and discredited mandatory style concepts.The worst part is that it will lull the public into thinking something is being done to help the addicted,the mentally ill and the homeless.The reality is that this will do a lot of damage and will do very little if anything to alleviate the suffering of these people.