Thomas Gowan is a Vancouver-based author and rapper.Vancouver, with its pristine coast and picturesque mountain views is one of the most beautiful backdrops to get your head severed from your body as a retiree out for an early morning stroll. Breathtaking views for a literally breathtaking city, where catering to addicts and criminals has been prioritized over the safety of everyday citizens.“Don’t blame them” the public officials say, as it’s revealed the perpetrator had dozens of prior police interactions. “Crime is down” we’re told, as random assaults have become a daily occurrence. The spectre of violence looms over the lives of regular Vancouverites, especially in the downtown core, yet it’s dismissed as a minor inconvenience that's out of our control. Nothing could be further from the truth.Whether it’s sexual assaults and random acts of violence against women, stabbing sprees every two to three months of grown men or murders of the elderly, day or night, age or sex, the violence doesn’t subside or discriminate. Criminality has been given such a green light, such free reign in our city that it’s festered and grown beyond immediate repair. .EISEN / HILL: A New Year’s resolution for the Eby government — stop overspending.Groping in Stanley Park? Unsolved. Lit on fire by a SkyTrain station? Unsolved. Armed robbery at a Commercial Dr. cafe? Unsolved. Intended or not, every new crime scene exposes the results of a system working in accordance with its values, to sacrifice public safety on the altar of unmitigated drug consumption.The swapping of community well-being for commercialized human suffering began in 2003, when Vancouver became the unwitting subject of drug decriminalization and host of Insite, a legalized opium den. .Operating under the auspices of reducing public drug use and preventing overdose deaths, we’ve since seen a hellish landscape of suicide via substance abuse emerge. Drug consumption, via pipes, needles and oblong tubes are still shamelessly on display and have become a permanent fixture of public areas.Overdose deaths have exploded 300% to all time highs of approximately 2,500 a year. That’s about five deaths every single day. So besides failing to even remotely fulfill its prerogative, what’s been unleashed on BC has resulted in more fatalities year over year than died in the province during the entire period of Covid, a global pandemic..Lockdowns and vaccine mandates were implemented because “one life lost was too many,” but when it comes to drug users, apparently one life isn’t enough. The continued defence of this deadly trajectory further proves that in spite of Insite’s harmful track record, the powers at be are happy to keep things going exactly the way they are.Instead of calling it quits due to the obvious havoc that’s been caused, it was decided that no, the public just needs to be convinced not to trust their own eyes. So in 2018, deep in the throes of this disastrous program, the BC government tried to rebrand what an addict is, but ads portraying them as a victim or friend were ultimately undone by reality. The years of first hand experience have shown us what a truly great friend they would be, one who steals your bike, ties up emergency services and beats you to death in the street.The fact is real friends don’t let friends throw their lives away, nor is it a friend’s duty to turn a blind eye to selfish ne'er-do-wells who choose not to get their life together. The real victims demanding sympathy in this scenario are the productive members of polite society, who’re paralyzed and penalized by the perpetuation of drug use and its intrinsic criminality.They’re the ones who ultimately pay, with their taxes and in some cases, their lives, to reside in such an imbalanced state. They’re the ones our current pro-drug system is actively working against and safety is not the only aspect of their lives being imposed upon..GIESBRECHT: Supply management can no longer be justified.We greatly reduced the speed on Hastings, a primary roadway, to that of a school zone. There isn’t a school in sight, but there is the Insite, which ultimately makes the stagnated flow of traffic more like a funeral procession, disrupting your commute so you can pay respects to the dead..Apparently forcing grown adults to wait for a traffic light is oppressive and stigmatizing. Not allowing them to cross whenever they feel like diminishes their humanity and causes irreparable harm. Slowing down and encumbering your average citizen, that’s what modern living is all about. Appeasing anti-social, low impulse control individuals over contributing members of society, that’s true progress towards a better tomorrow.We’ve also created a literal mess of our streets, requiring a small army of needle collectors and elaborate, police-escorted clean-up details to undo. A waste of tax dollars and man hours to pick up litter due to our excusing the aforementioned adults from civic responsibility. For some reason, junkies, caught up in their all consuming task of getting high, refuse to use a refuse bin, even if it’s mere steps away..To add insult to injury, sometimes what they carelessly discard on our streets or sidewalks are the very containers that once held the free meal they so ungratefully consumed. Besides the ever increasing rat population, you’ll find random trash piles pop up like crop circles all over the city. Bodies of immobilized drug users are strewn about like garbage in pedestrian areas, so much so you’ll find yourself playing the ‘is it trash or is it human’ game more times than you can count. Greenest city by 2030 let’s go!Is this really a "drug epidemic"? Hardly, no. The culprit isn’t some vague haze of "addiction" or a lab grown disease. The deaths are a result of human misconduct, man’s inhumanity to man. We are in a drug war, waged by parasitic individuals, gangs and cartels, who exploitatively target the escapist tendencies of immature citizens for profit.What is “safe supply” but a constant and uninterrupted flow of hard drugs to a collection of spiralling users unable to get themselves clean. It’s a criminal enterprise, sending government funds directly to the cartels via “Welfare Wednesday” and other subsidized doping slush funds. Any government entity employing spin tactic phrasing like “safe supply” or “harm reduction" further ensures to a sitting duck public that nothing will be done to stop it..CARPAY: Ottawa's assault on our internet freedoms must stop now.The weakness of Vancouver’s pro-drug, soft on crime approach is further magnified by the fact many of the worst move west. Having been kicked out of every province, those who aren’t jailed along the way eventually end up here, using BC as a comfortable landing pad to continue their criminal lifestyle. This demands the justice system be even stricter to properly handle this advanced stage of criminality, as it’s the only responsible way to counteract this trend.Instead of accommodating drug users and career criminals, we must hold them accountable. No more excusing bad behaviour. Gone are the days of using the guise of mental illness or addiction to justify poor decision making. Citizens who make a choice, consciously or unconsciously, to destroy their own lives also create the environment to harm others.No longer will they be given the space to operate, nor will the traffickers who take advantage of their poor decision making. Twenty years of coddling and facilitating drug use has brought us here and pretending it’s okay while repeating the mistakes of the past will not get us out..Zero tolerance for hard drug use and possession. One gram or less of cocaine, heroin, meth, crack or fentanyl is an immediate mandatory one year sentence to a treatment centre. Anything over one gram is one year in prison per subsequent gram. One for one. Littering needs to receive heavy fines, community service and or prison time for repeat offenders. Drug tests must be required as a prerequisite to receive any welfare or social housing. The Hastings speed limit needs to be returned to 60km. Colony Farms needs to be expanded. Riverview needs to be repaired, renovated and reopened. Anti-drug stigmas and pro-sobriety education needs to be reintroduced as an inexpensive social buffer to deter self-harm and anti-social behaviour. Violent offenders need to receive a one-strike five year minimum. Murder is life in prison.No more Insite. No more free drugs. No more enablement..WIECHNIK: Bio-Leninism and Canadian protest politics .A one week amnesty period is a reasonable allowance before implementation, giving people ample time to make the decision to stay or go but that’s it, that’s all. After those seven days, you’ve made the choice to stay and play by the rules or face the repercussions if you don’t. Anyone travelling to the province with malicious intent will know exactly what they’re getting into if they seek to ruin their own lives or the lives of others.Vancouver is a golden goose of a city, offering so much in terms of beauty and opportunity, yet instead of protecting this wellspring we’ve decided to poison and abuse it by capitulating to criminality. We absolutely and unequivocally must be able to guarantee and maintain the safety and security of everyone who lives and works here.For the good of our neighbours, both present and future, we must end the stranglehold of state-sponsored drug abuse before more lives are lost and we slip further into the abyss. No longer can we neglect this issue or claim we don’t know its cause. Now is the time to finally take ownership of the problem and transform Vancouver into one of the cleanest and safest cities on earth.
