Thomas Gowan is a Vancouver-based author and musician.Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside is ground zero of Canada's opium and fentanyl war. Populated by roaming swarms of the living damned, the crossroads of Main and Hastings have become a literal hellmouth, swallowing up both the young and the old, seeking to devour anyone, drug user or not, into its insatiable pit of death and despair.This apocalyptic vision of social decay didn’t just happen by accident; it took an ensemble cast to manufacture, generously fund and bureaucratically optimize such a magnificent collapse of civilization. Avoidant media, cowardly politicians, and malignant social workers are the unholy trinity making this blight on humanity possible. The bricks to the mortar that is a liberally apathetic civilian populace, these are the primary bad actors who’ve set the stage for such a wickedly catastrophic drug-induced tragedy to play out in our streets..HANNAFORD: Note to Mr. Carney, China is not our friend.The mainstream media does their best not to fan the flames of social issues except when politically advantageous. They repeatedly leave out key details, avoid prying for answers and fail to demand accountability. Most importantly, they play ball and keep things quiet. They already fail to report on suicides and bank robberies, so why report on this or the endless looting of public coffers by the SROs and money-pit drug programs? As long as they can maintain their access to public officials without ruffling any feathers, they’re content to prop up the status quo.When they do decide to release information, what they ultimately disclose is so inadequate, so absolutely insufficient, it’s borderline comical. Take the two man Cafe Du Soleil robbery in November 2022. The suspect description, parroted on various news outlets like CBC and Vancouver is Awesome was, and I quote, "both suspects were wearing hats, hoodies and gloves to hide their identities." Now please think about that for two seconds. Do you see it? Besides their faces apparently being fully visible, not a single standout characteristic or description was shared — colour of clothes, height, race, build, or any other distinguishing feature. At this point, how do we even know they were males? Despite such a non-existent description, police were still asking for the public to help with identifying the suspects. Based on what? This happened in broad daylight, mind you, with plenty of witnesses, further highlighting how the media is more of an accomplice to criminality than an institution dedicated to keeping the public well informed..The politicians, having conjured up this misery-laden municipality, are conveniently secluded on a literal island and don’t have to deal with the direct ramifications of their own failed policies. They don’t have to inhale the noxious second hand vapours of fentanyl or worry about getting attacked by repeat offenders on their way to work.Their voter base, made up of those who either revel in or make a living off this open air psych ward, are guaranteed to support their faulty mandates for aforementioned self-serving purposes. Also, why create laws criminalizing drugs when it risks exposing their drug using friends to legal ramifications?Even when they do take some semblance of accountability by admitting defeat, local politicians want to deflect and dump the responsibility onto their federal counterparts, asking to be rescued from the very problems they themselves created. Politicians already fear for their lives and avoid looking into casino money laundering, so it makes sense that protecting themselves from political fallout takes priority over protecting others, regardless of their obligation to serve..SLOBODIAN: Watching the homeless from a five-star hotel — Ottawa’s housing advocate embarrasses Canada abroad.For the majority of the last 50 years the NDP has been in charge of the Vancouver-Hastings riding — otherwise known as the poorest postal code in all of Canada — and they’ve made sure to keep it that way. The party against pipelines has had a change of heart when it comes to the pipeline of hard drugs to fresh victims. No treaty ought to be infringed, no band consultation or assessments required, the order to sustain the poverty & drug abuse industrial complex remains intact and uncontested under their prudent supervision.Who’s to say that another party would grow a spine and find the courage to combat this issue, but unless the current one starts to feel the winds of change and resolves to do the right thing, we can only hope an alternative arises to undo the decades of damage they’ve done. Approximately six million people live in BC. Of that six, only two million voted in the last election, and of that two million, only one million voted for the NDP. So we’re having one million decide the fate for the other five. Local politics in action.Pantomimes of compassion, social workers are the self-righteous enablers of this non-stop race to the bottom. As if facilitating another’s self-destruction was a virtuous act, the only form of abstinance they view as tolerable is that of judgement and not of condemning the slow suicide of hard drug use. They’ve made accommodating one's downfall a profitable experience, keeping users alive just enough to get funding but incapacitated enough that they’ll never escape this death spiral on their own volition..Losers in their own right, they surround themselves with people worse off than them so they can feel better about their own mediocre lives. Hastings is a factory farm and social workers are the farm hands. They might appear to be helping and taking care of junkies, but in reality, they’re just fattening them up for the slaughter.The bonus co-conspirator in this perfect storm of systemic malevolence is Vancouver’s general population. Their overly transient nature, being here to party, study or work on a temporary basis, is one of the pitfalls of our tourist-loving jet-setting town. These wandering sojourners are not looking to make Vancouver home, so feel no obligation to invest in local issues or live here long enough to even recognize what they are.Many of those who do reside here permanently fully embrace the "do what thou wilt" philosophy. Like the social workers, they’ll refrain from telling people what to do, unless of course, you’re counter to everything degrading to humanity, then their judgements will be shouted from the rooftops. They’ll form self-important organizations, hiding behind titles like ‘moms’, ‘students’ and ‘nurses’ while advocating for the uninterrupted flow of narcotics along with the claim that hard drug use is a human right..HANNAFORD: My bet, back to the polls in spring.At this point they might as well be on the cartel payroll. They also enjoy arguing that it’s the government’s fault for overdoses, as if the drug user doesn’t knowingly risk their lives, or shouldn’t be at risk, by taking harmful substances. They essentially view their advocacy as a form of “liberation” from the very mechanisms meant to protect and maintain a healthy society.The only decent organization created by the public to combat the enablement of criminality was Save Our Streets, which launched in October 2023. However, even with the long list of legitimate businesses as founding members, they were still unable to make the changes needed in time to save one of their own, the London Drugs on Hastings and Abbott, from going under due to crime in January 2026. When the entire society around you is hell bent on its own destruction, there is no recourse to change course, no magic lever to pull, no miracle to be hoped for, it’s the epitome of holding back the tide with a broom..Vancouver is a city that exists in morally ambiguous fog. It’s a champion of hedonistic mediocrity and an unironic victim of its own lack of honor and ambition. The longer we wait to recalibrate our misaligned values of right and wrong, the more these Dante-esque spawn points will spread, increasing both the number of anti-social pariahs to emerge and the innocent lives that will be dragged down with them.If Vancouver’s inhabitants do muster up the will to protest anything drug-policy related, it’ll be to ensure reckless self-abandonment continues, which they’re most likely participants of themselves. The amount of marijuana, mushroom and vape shops scattered everywhere on the lower mainland are a clear indication that escapism and self-medication is an all pervasive cultural force in this city..JÄGER: We all hate ridiculously bright headlights — why not restrict them?.It’s no wonder we’ve become such a breeding ground for even worse forms of drug abuse and the inevitable criminality that comes with it. The rest of the public are either too busy fighting to survive economically or wealthy enough to have successfully segregated themselves from problem areas, so they pay it no mind even though they can afford to.The public disorder we see today could easily be solved, almost overnight, if media messaging was succinct and politicians cared enough to see safety and security restored. The city was turned into a ghost town during covid because the journalist and political classes converged towards a common goal and it’s time to use that same pairing for the benefit of everyone who lives and visits here.The dismissal of misguided public opinion and the crackdown on crime leading up to the 2010 Olympics was an even clearer display of political will and institutional efficiency, of what’s possible when we say enough is enough. It’s no doubt that in preparation for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, we’ll get more of the same, but this time, we need to keep it that way.This time, the show must not go on.Thomas Gowan is a Vancouver-based author and musician.
