Vancouver Canada Giving Out Free Crack Pipes
We all know the crack epidemic has long gone global, but Canada’s Vancouver Eastside seems to be enabling their dope fiends.
The area also known as Vancouver’s “Square Mile Of Vice” is home to the city’s track which includes drug dealing, prostitution and homelessness… and peep this… houses the city’s only residential Black community. The UK’s Daily Mail reports that the city is now adopting a program to provide free crack pipes to its drug-addicted population in an effort to stop the spread of HIV and Hepatitis B and C.
The $60-thousand 8-month trial is being conducted by The Vancouver Coastal Health Harm Reduction program. 60,000 kits are expected to be distributed at 5 different locations.
The Vancouver Coastal Health Harm Reduction program also states that since the city’s heroin users already receive clean needles from the needle exchange program, they should try to create a safer inhalation program for those who are addicted to crack. They also hope to persuade users to enter into drug rehab programs since they’ll have access to many of the addicts coming in to get free pipes as well as mouthpieces, filters, alcohol swabs, screens and push sticks.
The majority of users are males between the ages of 20 to 60 and Vancouver’s Coastal Health Authority spokesperson Trudi Beutel says,
“It’s about preventing more communicable diseases which land these people in hospital on a frequent basis and clog up emergency rooms.”
There is some opposition though to the program as David Brener, director of the Drug Prevention Network of Canada, said,
“Programs like this ignore the problems of addiction. All this does is aid and abet. What we should do is put that same amount of money into treatment and prevention. Because treatment and prevention work.”
