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Vancouver Blames for Montieth death?


Ilya Bryzgalov

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Before we get into anything the new Definition of Stupidity is Lucia Corbella! This is her the Twitter https://twitter.com/LiciaCorbella

This is here the email

lcorbella@calgaryherald.com

feel free to send here peice of you mind. I already did.

Ask any informed Vancouverite where you could pick up a bit of heroin and they’d be able to tell you. Everyone from teetotalling old ladies with blue hair to a straight-A student in elementary school — all know if you want hard, illicit drugs, just go to the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver and heroin will be as easy to acquire as chewing gum.

Heck, ask virtually any informed person across the country and they’d be able to tell you that if you want to go on a seedy trip of your choosing — be it a heroin holiday or a crack cocaine carousal — just head down to East Hastings Street and you will find what you’re looking for with no risk of arrest.

Which brings us to the heroin-alcohol overdose death of promising young Glee actor and singer, Cory Monteith.

The Calgary-born actor, who was raised in Victoria, was found dead Saturday in his room at the Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel, which is a five-minute cab ride away from the Downtown Eastside, but worlds away in terms of ambience.

It’s unlikely that the 31-year-old would have risked bringing hard drugs across the border from his home in the United States, so it’s safe to assume he either picked some up himself or had a gofer do it for him by visiting InSite, the government-sponsored and funded safe injection site at 139 East Hastings. The next step is easy. Wait for an injection drug user to show up, ask them to score you some heroin, grab a few clean, free needles and distilled water, and you’re set.

So the question is, if Monteith were visiting virtually any other city in Canada, would he have been able to find heroin? Would he have died? I think the likelihood is much lower.

Proponents of safe injection sites argue that such harm-reduction strategies save lives and that’s inarguably true. After all, if an injection drug user overdoses in the safe injection site, then a nurse is on hand to offer assistance and call an ambulance. This has happened numerous times.

But no one ever asks how many people have died of drug overdoses who use the safe injection site as a legally safe place to procure drugs.

Several years ago, while partaking in one of my addictions — the double crunch sushi roll at Midori Japanese Restaurant on 17th Avenue — I overheard a group of three young people talking excitedly about how on their upcoming trip to Vancouver, they intended to drop by InSite to try heroin for the first time. I have since long wished I had butted into their conversation and intervened.

There will be some people reading this who will assume that finding heroin in any major Canadian city is an easy thing to do, so InSite really doesn’t make things that much easier for first-timers to find and partake in their inaugural heroin hit, or for people like Monteith — who had a history of drug use, to find some easily. But an anecdote, dating back many years now, proves this wrong.

Back in the early 1990s, I was assigned to cover the growing heroin trade in Toronto. I had great police contacts then and they told me to head down to the Parkdale neighbourhood and ask virtually any of the street prostitutes I saw if they would talk to me.

Sure enough, the first working girl I approached was Sam — whom we called Jackie for the article — who along with her boyfriend, Danny, had to make enough money daily to support their $600-a-day heroin habit.

Sam and I hit it off. We shared a lot of laughs and some tears as I injected myself into her messed up life for a week and then we stayed in touch. I made sure she had my home number as well as my work phone number, and one night, months after the story ran, she phoned me in a panic from Montreal.

She had left Danny for a regular customer and had run out of heroin in Quebec. As she entered into the agony of withdrawal, she begged me to drive to Parkdale that Saturday night, find Danny and get him to put some heroin on a Greyhound bus for her, as she couldn’t find heroin in Montreal.

I told her what I’d do instead was call the Montreal police and ask them if they knew where the heroin users and dealers hung out. I didn’t have any Montreal police contacts, but called the on-duty sergeant. He didn’t know and neither did the various other police officers I was transferred to.

In other words, show up in most North American cities and even a heroin junkie can’t necessarily find their poison. Even police don’t know where to go in their own city to find the stuff. But ask my strait-laced 82-year-old mom in Vancouver, and even she knows.

Would Cory Monteith still be alive had he been visiting Halifax, Toronto or Calgary instead of Vancouver? In my view, it’s highly likely.

InSite is well meaning. But the time has long passed for an independent investigator to really study how many people are using it as a gateway into hard drug use and a legally “risk free” way to procure an illegal substance.

Licia Corbella is a columnist and the editorial page editor.

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Addicts can get drugs anywhere if they have the connections.

DTES is a black eye on our city I'm not denying that but there is a skid row in every major city not just vancouver.

The article is very shortsighted considering his original addiction problems started on the island.

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Yes, Vancouver is known for it's drug problem, but if a person wants drugs, he/she will be able to find them no matter what city they are in. A claim that any particular city is immune to this issue is an ignorant one.

Just a quick scan of 'drug overdose deaths in Calgary' leads to a significant bodycount over the past year or two.

TO is hardly immune either. "About 900 people have died of accidental overdose in Toronto between 2002 and 2010, according the office of Ontario’s chief coroner. Of those deaths, 538 were due to opioids."

Yup... Drugs are everywhere.

Frankly, blaming anything other than Cory Monteith for Cory Monteith's death is asinine.

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Why do we feel the need to blame? Why is there always the need to point the finger?

He ODed on heroin, it's tragic accident unless the heroin was tainted. There is no one and nothing to blame, if there is then everyone is to blame. I know for some this is hard to swallow but it's true.

Do we Blame him for doing the drugs?

Do we Blame his parents for not raising him to be fearful of drugs?

Do we Blame his friends for not intervening but perhaps fueling the addiction with good times?

Do we Blame hollywood for giving him the money to support his addiction?

Do we Blame the producer of the drugs or the dealer?

Do we Blame the city that ignores the use of the drugs?

Do we Blame the country for not blocking the drugs into the country in the first place?

Do we Blame society for being such that it is to lead a young man to drugs?

All are guilty but why do we need to blame? Let's just mourn his loss and hope that perhaps awareness and good can come from this in terms of social awareness and maybe those young people he influenced with his career will forever steer clear of drugs.

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Why do we feel the need to blame? Why is there always the need to point the finger?

He ODed on heroin, it's tragic accident unless the heroin was tainted. There is no one and nothing to blame, if there is then everyone is to blame. I know for some this is hard to swallow but it's true.

Do we Blame him for doing the drugs?

Do we Blame his parents for not raising him to be fearful of drugs?

Do we Blame his friends for not intervening but perhaps fueling the addiction with good times?

Do we Blame hollywood for giving him the money to support his addiction?

Do we Blame the producer of the drugs or the dealer?

Do we Blame the city that ignores the use of the drugs?

Do we Blame the country for not blocking the drugs into the country in the first place?

Do we Blame society for being such that it is to lead a young man to drugs?

All are guilty but why do we need to blame? Let's just mourn his loss and hope that perhaps awareness and good can come from this in terms of social awareness and maybe those young people he influenced with his career will forever steer clear of drugs.

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Share on other sites

Why do we feel the need to blame? Why is there always the need to point the finger?

He ODed on heroin, it's tragic accident unless the heroin was tainted. There is no one and nothing to blame, if there is then everyone is to blame. I know for some this is hard to swallow but it's true.

Do we Blame him for doing the drugs?

Do we Blame his parents for not raising him to be fearful of drugs?

Do we Blame his friends for not intervening but perhaps fueling the addiction with good times?

Do we Blame hollywood for giving him the money to support his addiction?

Do we Blame the producer of the drugs or the dealer?

Do we Blame the city that ignores the use of the drugs?

Do we Blame the country for not blocking the drugs into the country in the first place?

Do we Blame society for being such that it is to lead a young man to drugs?

All are guilty but why do we need to blame? Let's just mourn his loss and hope that perhaps awareness and good can come from this in terms of social awareness and maybe those young people he influenced with his career will forever steer clear of drugs.

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Addicts can get drugs anywhere if they have the connections.

DTES is a black eye on our city I'm not denying that but there is a skid row in every major city not just vancouver.

The article is very shortsighted considering his original addiction problems started on the island.

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She doesn't think her own city is awash in easy to acquire drugs? Pretty obvious she doesn't take the LRT or else she would see that 7th Ave is basically "The Pit" as depicted in the Wire. Not to mention neighborhoods like Forest Lawn, the Beltline, Bowness or East Village (which is their own version of Hastings where the base-heads congregate - though they apparently are cracking down). Every bar in the NE is rolling. Can't believe this twit actually writes for a newspaper, zero integrity.

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