Dear editor,
“Forced recovery” is Connor McDowell’s opinion: the BC government’s decriminalization of small amounts of illicit street drugs is “ridiculous.”
Yet his premises are fraught with omission and apparent bias of vigorous partisanship.
Homelessness isn’t always the result of addiction (the reverse might be truer). “It is illogical,” he says: nobody will voluntarily get sober “after they were unable to do that to save their job, career, family, health [and] house [because of addiction].”
But that’s not what decriminalization is actually about. Many homeless never had most of those things to lose anyway, particularly if suffering from mental illness. McDowell says addicts wake up to find they have lost everything so it’s “naive” to expect them to opt for treatment at this point (I agree with this last point, at least: it doesn’t seem very logical).
I never heard that B.C.’s offer of treatment means that “in exchange for turning sober, the person does not preserve custody of their child, or save their career,” but it’s consistent with misunderstanding treatment.
Citing Oregon’s decision to rescind decriminalization, McDowell says: “In charge of their recovery, people supported their addiction while ignoring” the treatment offered. “I think we can all relate to that in some way,” he says without explanation. But decriminalization is not about putting users “in charge of their recovery.”
Calling B.C. leaders “negligent” for not returning to criminal treatment, McDowell tempers: “It might make sense to keep an open-door, hands-off policy for some people” (presumably those who have homes like the large majority of users). However, B.C.’s policy isn’t “hands-off.” Instead, it introduces users to a variety of treatment options, although some, like safe supply, are still not fully implemented yet.
Decriminalization lets users avail options without fear of getting busted on their way to someplace where they aren’t using alone. Coercing users into detox, with its relapse rate over 75 per cent, is proven ineffective. Nevertheless, “I think there’s evidence to intervene,” says McDowell —without giving any.
His diatribe isn’t only remarkable for coinciding with current rhetoric from the partisan right, but also because he is the Record’s own reporter who should know better than to appear both so opinionated and so misinformed.
Geoffrey Donaldson,
Denman Island