Author: Vincent Tao

VANDU wins award for Excellence in Community Programming

The Kaiser Foundation has choosen VANDU as recipient of their 2011 Excellence in Community Programming award. Accompanying this honour VANDU receives $10,000 for a recognized charity of its choice.

“Mental health and addictions are health issues, not moral ones,” said the Foundation’s Founder and Chairman Edgar Kaiser Jr. “The recipients always amaze me,” continued Kaiser. “One of the main reasons we established this Awards Program was to acknowledge and celebrate the extraordinary work being done in this field by individuals, community groups and the media. These people often get little or no recognition for their efforts and we hope that shining a light on their work will help raise awareness of mental health and addictions locally and nationally.”

VANDU host radio show on drug users’ health

You can download a copy of the VANDU hosted program on drug user health on the People’s Health Radio at rabble.ca. The program was created on February 17, 2011.

Drug Bust Statistics Canada 1997-2007

From looking through these statistics one sees the myth that Canadian police aren’t really busting people for possession. As well, one can see the increasing criminalization of children. Most useful and revealing is the table of types of drug busts for various metropolitan areas.

Download ZIP.

Our target should be the decision-makers who put politics above evidence and are prepared to take risks with other people’s lives

Gerry Stimson, former Executive Director of the International Harm Reduction Association (IRHA), recently gave a important speech in which he defended harm reduction from political revisionism and properly asserted “A harm reduction approach to drug use is still relevant”. You can download a .pdf copy of Professor Stimson’s speech or watch a video of it entirely here.

While importantly Stimson emphasises that it is important to still work on reducing the harms that drug users risk in the context of their drug using (overdose, HIV or Hep C, impoverishment, violence, marginalization, etc.) it is equally necessary that we begin to regard decision-makers who put politics above evidence (Canada’s Conservative’s are a prime example of such) as major harm causers and risk takers with the live’s of people who use drugs. In other words, rather than always trying to change the behaviour of the powerless (the drug users) it is time we started focussing our efforts to change the behaviour of the powerful (political decision makers).

The example of Vancouver’s change in the political risk environment is emphasized in Stimson’s speech. He notes that in two years the political climate changed from risk in supporting a safer injection site to risk as a politician if they didn’t support the opening of InSite. He considers some of the factors which came together in Vancouver to make such a transformation in the political risk environment possible, emphasizing among other factors, “the peer-run Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users”.

In April 2003 VANDU worked with other community groups in the Downtown Eastside to establish and run a safer injection site. It took a bold effort of civil disobedience to create the unauthorized site at 327 Carral Street. Staffed by street nurses and other volunteers, the city’s mayor had no problem with the site, however the police chief was opposed and threatened to shut it down. By forcing the issue of safer injection sites, VANDU helped apply pressure on the federal government to approve the establishment of North America’s first official sanctioned safer injection site, InSite, four months later.

“Militants open safe injection site” Download Word document

Further reading about VANDU’s safe site civil disobedience, see Harm Reduction Activism Download PDF

Numerous VANDU members have contributed their ideas toward the development of a manifesto for drug users’ liberation. In their manifesto, VANDU clearly articulates the cutting edge of their positions on issues which the international movement for rights for people who use drugs must recognize for that movement to be a genuine means for grass-roots representation by drug users of the daily issues they face and liberation objectives they strive for.

Entitled “VANDU MANIFESTO for a Drug User Liberation Movement” it is a document in progress. Download Word document

Susan Boyd has written a short article about the early development of the first women-centered harm reduction project in the Downtown Eastside. In this article entitled “Journey to Compassionate Care” Susan outlines the herstory of DAMS – Drug and Alcohol Meeting Support for Women – which began in 1991.
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“Prison Needle Exchange: review of the evidence” was prepared by the Public Health Agency of Canada in April 2006 for the Correctional Service of Canada. In its role as a provider of evidence-based research for the government, PHAC outlines the evidence of more than 50 prison needle exchange outcomes around the world, including programmes in Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Ukraine and Iran. The Canadian authorities, even while presented with strong evidence showing no negative outcomes from prison needle exchange, remain committed to not allowing such harm reduction possibility for Canadian prisoners.
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“25 Year Quagmire: the War on Drugs and its impact on American Society” was prepared by the American-based Sentencing Project and released in September 2007. This report demonstrates how the war on drugs has been the primary vehicle driving the enormous growth of the U.S. prison system over the past quarter century. Given the present Conservative government’s intention of bolstering the drug war in Canada, increasing sentences for drug-related offences, and a multi-billion dollar expansion of prison facilities in this country, this report is a clear warning for what we can expect from the punative moralistic based absurdity which is the federal Conservatives drug policy.
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The Centre for Addictions Research of B.C. and the B.C. Ministry of Healthy Living and Sport have released a succinct review of developments in methadone maintenance in B.C. over the past 12 years. The lead author of this document is Dan Reist, an Assistant Director and senior policy analyst with the Centre for Addictions Research of B.C..

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A study reported in the Canadian Medical Association’s Journal in 2009 finds that crack smoking is a factor in HIV transmission among people who use injection drugs. The study looked at data from 1996 to 2005 among some 1048 injection drug users in Vancouver who also reported smoking crack cocaine.

This is how the study’s authors summarized its findings:

Smoking of crack cocaine was found to be an independent risk factor for HIV seroconversion among people who were injection drug users. This finding points to the urgent need for evidence-based public health initiatives targeted at people who smoke crack cocaine.

Download the study entitled “Smoking of crack cocaine as a risk factor for HIV infection among people who use injection drugs” Download PDF.