Brighton,known as the "drugs death capital" of the UK, with per capita mortality rates higher than any other city.
Brighton,known as the "drugs death capital" of the UK, with per capita mortality rates higher than any other city. The city has held this unwanted title for six out of the last eight years – despite costly intervention schemes and dedicated work by police and health services to reduce drug supply and demand.With this – and an estimated 2,300 injecting heroin users – in mind, it's hard to fault Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust for agreeing to support a trial centre, and when I heard about the project, I jumped at the chance to join the nursing team.So, I've been giving people heroin for the last two years. People have often asked me if I think the treatment works. I do. I've seen it first-hand. But until yesterday, you would have had to take my word for it. Now scientifically rigorous evidence is out there.Our trial participants were all long-term heroin addicts who had failed to benefit from existing treatment options. They continued to inject heroin daily, or on most days, and their drug use was considered intractable. In my experience, many had little hope for their own recovery.The results show that, of those receiving injectable heroin, a substantial majority had either dramatically reduced their illicit heroin use or ceased altogether after six months' treatment, although marked improvements were seen after just six weeks. The average weekly spend on illicit heroin, per client, dropped from £300 to £50.The cost of injectable heroin treatment is estimated at £15,000 per person annually, compared to regular methadone treatment at about £3,000. It looks expensive, but if you add in the crime bill, this group of people actually costs less to treat with heroin than with oral methadone. Prison, which has limited therapeutic benefits, costs £44,000 a year. Not treating this group of people at all also comes with a massive bill. Estimates of an annual drug expenditure of £15,000 to £30,000 per addict are not uncommon. If this sum is to be raised through acquisitive crime, as is often the case, goods worth perhaps three times that value need to be stolen.Trial participants showed gains in physical and mental health, social functioning and, I can report anecdotally, self-respect. Almost all of the clients at my clinic have chosen to stop injecting twice a day and only come once in the morning. Two are living drug free. And nobody died.
2010homelesschampions.ca
This website is dedicated to telling the stories of the unfortunate individuals living in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver in the hope that awareness of this problem will spur people to get involved, to let all levels of government know that something has to be done to alleviate this misery rooted in addiction, homelessness and depravity. To point the way to recovery from addiction, which we believe is the root of most of this situation. With the 2010 Olympics coming to Vancouver it is our mandate to record the transition and the extreme changes that are even now occurring and will continue to unfold in the Downtown Eastside.
More than 2 million syringes are handed out free every year. Clean mouthpieces for crack pipes are provided at taxpayers’ expense. Around 4,000 opiate addicts get prescription methadone. Thousands come to the injection site every year
addiction is a state in which the body relies on a substance for normal functioning and develops physical dependence, as in drug addiction. When the drug or substance on which someone is dependent is suddenly removed, it will cause withdrawal, a characteristic set of signs and symptoms. Addiction is generally associated with increased drug tolerance common usage of the term addiction has spread to include psychological dependence. In this context, the term is used in drug addiction and substance abuse problems
Impelled by the horror show of the Downtown East Side, prodded by activists and convinced by reams of academic studies, the police and city government have agreed to provide hard drug users with their paraphernalia, a place to use it and even, for a few, the drugs themselves.
Homelessness is the condition and social category of people who lack housing, because they cannot afford, or are otherwise unable to maintain, regular, safe, and adequate shelter. The term "homelessness" may also include people whose primary nighttime residence is in a homeless shelter, in an institution that provides a temporary residence for individuals intended to be institutionalized, or in a public or private place not designed for use as a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings..........
A very small number of people choose to be homeless
Vancouver OlympicTourism ...
THE CITY OF VANCOUVER HOLDS THE 2010 ADDICTION OLYMPICS THIS YEAR. THE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIlHevMLnA4&feature=fvsr
VANCOUVER CITY OF ADDICTION
The dtes is a melting pot of people from all walks, the addiction scourge that exists there will continue to grow as long as the support for this lifestyle is supported by so called harm reduction policies. Safe injection clean needles i agree with for health and potential overdoses. The fact that the vpd will not charge you for possession makes this part of town a freeway to hell. The so called four pillars approach should add another pillar the fact that insite has over seven thousand registered iv users and the estimated number of people in active addiction is said to be some ten thousand in a twelve square block area means that all these addict's have a habit to support and drug's to buy. To me the fifth pillar seems to be let the drug dealers do what they want. The amount of arrest's for trafficking does not add up compared to consumption how do i know you ask well let me tell from a personal observation over the last five years. I walk and or drive through this area of town daily and it seems that the same drug dealer's set up shop at the same locations daily i have never seen them arrested the seem to be untouchable so in conclusion i say the fifth pillar must be to supply the four. You can get heroin, cocaine ,crack, rx, weed, twenty four seven in this part of town at many well known places. People from across the city as well the country migrate here to the addiction capital of north America knowing that it's a free for all. Here is links to stories i have personally written and witnessed in the last six month's The first is a video of the Carnegie centre at main and hasting's the second is a unbelievable example of the brazen drug dealer's who sell there wares across the street from the Carnegie and some three hundred yards from the Vancouver police station
THE CARNGIE DRUG MART http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uz13o_drThE
WHO’S IN CONTROL Wednesday, April 22, 2009
WHO’S IN CONTROL ?
Today in the downtown eastside of Vancouver it is welfare day. The streets are buzzing with addicts on every corner, and in every alley there are smiles everywhere as people line up to cash their welfare checks at the many different financial institutions.
Money is being spent on many different things, but the main expenditure on this the most joyful day of the month is drugs; heroin, crack or cocaine, alcohol etc. Although this has been going on for years and is accepted by not only the city, the police, the taxpayers, and the government .
I as a citizen of this city have had enough! Do I care? You bet I do! I myself have recovered from 25 years of addiction and today have been clean for some seven years. What I saw today was to me the last straw, not more than 300 hundred yards from the Vancouver Police Station on Main Street is a check cashing store, out front there’s a line up since it opened its doors this morning; I walked by and could not believe my eyes. There were 5 two hundred pound Spanish drug dealers standing in front of the door escorting people in and out of the store as if it was theirs, controlling who went in, and even more importantly who came out, only too happy to direct them to one of their associates standing nearby. I was so disgusted by this flagrant arrogance that I took five minutes to walk over to the police station and tell them their business and to complain about what I see as nothing short of telling the people of Vancouver who’s really in control!
I don’t believe there’s anywhere else in North America that you would ever witness this kind of lawlessness as seen here in the 2010 Olympic city. I’m appealing to every editor of every newspaper in North America other than here in Vancouver to help me stop this out of control situation. Please for the sake of these humans, help me to put pressure on our police, city, and government to enforce the laws of this land and save all or any of these poor lost souls from a life of terminal addiction. editor@2010homelesschampions.ca
THE CITY OF VANCOUVER CANADA HAS A DRUG PROBLEM
HEROIN AND CRACK COCAINE RULE THE STREET'S IN THE DOWNTOWN EASTSIDE OF VANCOUVER, YOU CAN FIND THESE DRUGS AT THE DROP OF A HAT ON ALMOST EVERY CORNER TWENTY FOUR HOURS A DAY. THE VANCOUVER POLICE DEPARTMENT WILL NO LONGER CHARGE DRUG ADDICTS FOR POSSESSION THEY SAY IT TAKES UP TO MUCH TIME FOR PAPER WORK AND THEY NEED TO BE ACTIVE ON THE STREET FOR VIOLENT CRIMES OR THEFT
THE 2010 OLYMPIC CITY GET'S HIGH
The Vancouver Police Department’s new strategy for the Downtown Eastside
The Vancouver Police Department outlined a new change to the way it polices the Downtown Eastside in its board meeting on Wednesday. Under the changed strategy, the VPD will not arrest and charge drug users and expend resources on prosecuting. Rather, they will shift their focus to street disorder. However, the implication of this shift is that it increases the presence of the VPD in the neighborhood. The business plan identifies a number of behaviors to be targeted by the VPD. These include aggressive panhandling, squeegeeing, open-air drug markets, unlicensed street vending and sleeping in city parks. The 20% increase in the number of public nuisance tickets the police have been handing out to the homeless and other residents in the neighborhood was not a part of the new plan. However, it is troubling that considerable discretion remains for the police to hand out public nuisance tickets to individuals who have neither a roof over their head or money to pay the fines.
The shift in policy actually seems like a continuation from Project Civil Society, implemented under the former mayor. While David Eby, executive director of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, sees these changes as a positive step, he said he would like to see the VPD return items the police have seized from homeless people in recent years. Activists have said that the police strategy in the neighborhood has been to target homeless people to clean the streets for the 2010 Winter Olympics, view http://www.2010homelesschampions.ca.
THIS NEIGHBORHOOD HAS OVER TEN THOUSAND ACTIVE PEOPLE IN ADDICTION LIVING IN A TWELVE SQUARE BLOCK AREA. SOMETIMES YOU CAN HAVE THREE OR FOUR HUNDRED PEOPLE ON THE STREET IN A TWO BLOCK AREA AT ONE TIME JUST LOOKING FOR TROUBLE THERE IS NOW WHERE ELSE IN NORTH AMERICA THAT YOU WOULD SEE THIS KIND OF ACTIVITY BUT HERE IN VANCOUVER IT'S COMMON
EVERYDAY NEW PEOPLE ARE BEING INTRODUCED TO THIS PLAGUE AND NOT MUCH IS OR CAN BE DONE ABOUT IT. THE DTES IS VERY POPULAR ON GOOGLE VIDEOS THEY HAVE OVER FIVE HUNDRED VIDEO'S ABOUT THIS PART OF TOWN AND THE LIFESTYLE OF THE RESIDENTS THAT LIVE HERE, PEOPLE ACTUALLY COME FROM ALL OVER NORTH AMERICA TO SEE THIS SPECTACLE IN DISBELIEF THE CITY KNOWS THERE'S NOTHING THEY CAN DO TO STOP IT BECAUSE IT'S OUT OF CONTROL