Justin Trudeau, Liberal Party, New Prime Minister of Canada and Drug Addiction

Justin Trudeau, leader of the Liberal Party, is the new Prime Minister of Canada. Though a long standing Liberal I left the Liberal Party some 15 years ago to join the Conservatives. I voted for Mr. Stephen Harper.  He lost after two terms as Prime Minister. I am by all measures a Canadian.  I loved Mr. Harper's service to the country. I loved the Conservatives in power if only because the Conservatives and NDP are the only parties that have cared for Western Canadians.  So I'm sad today that Mr. Harper and the Conservatives lost.

I personally am soured by Mr. Justin Trudeau.  I appreciate his 'honesty' that he smoked marijuana while working. Was he smoking marijuana while a school teacher or just as a legislator? I hear he has perhaps minimized the times he smoked marijuana.  Politicians aren't known for their honesty.

I am glad too that marijuana has essentially be decriminalized this last decade. I fundamentally don't agree with legalization because that actually means that marijuana can then be sold like bread or milk anywhere. I was very disturbed that the illegal marijuania distributions centres of Vancouver were offering free marijuana to anyone who voted.

What fundamentally bothers me though, is that I personally smoked marijuana. The last time was 17 years ago.  I bought it from doctors, smoked it with doctors and saw a psychiatrist who recommended I smoke it.  The trouble was, that I felt wrong about smoking marijuana and working as a doctor. It especially didn't seem right that I was smoking marijuana and working as a psychiatrist.

I was never 'impaired' at work.  I wasn't an 'impaired physician'.  I didn't present a 'risk to patient safety'.  I just didn't think it was right that I was breaking the law.  I also knew too many people who had suffered negative consequences of using marijuana, loss of employment, legal records and jail time. I have seen far too many relationships and families devastated by marijuana.

Justin Trudeau's mother was a marijuana addict.  I have thought that Justin Trudeau must be in some serious denial about the effects of marijuana being the son of an addict himself.

I have mixed feelings about the process of my own recovery now.  Personally I appreciate the spiritual benefits of the wonderful learning of recovery. I am so very thankful to have the clarity of mind restored that seemed somewhat lost the last year I smoked marijuana.   Administratively thought the process was essentially 'punishment'. It was framed in different language but the process was still punishment.   It was heavy handed, threatening, bullying, incredibly expensive, and shaming. There was and remains a 'double standard'. There are those who didn't get 'caught' and those who got 'caught' and people like me who sought help only to get caught up in the mixed message of a very sick and disturbed administration.

Now here I am today an addiction medicine specialist. I have patients who were like me. They have safety sensitive jobs. I see doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals.  I am expected to provide a rigorous treatment program with many random urine testing and onerous requirements because as I was told, these jobs are a 'privilege'.  They're not a right.

Yet here the highest job in the country has gone to a person who has committed crimes without consequence.  He's never been subjected to random urine testing, required to see psychiatrists, required to see addiction medicine specialists, required to attend counselling, had supervision in the workplace, or had the threat of losing his job if any suspicion fell on him. He has not had to be 'caesar's wife' in regards to his personal behaviour vis a vis the drug using crowd.

He hasn't had to deal with both the wonderful people in the recovery health care movement and the utterly sick and disturbed power weilding petty beaurocrats who holier than thou revel in their being above the law because they haven't been caught in their addictions.  Being in the system I know so many people who have 'avoided' detection like the privileged who 'avoided' Vietnam leaving that war to be fought by the average joe.

Maybe my angst today is about the rich and privileged and the sons of the rich and priviledged.  I don't like the double standard. Indeed I could have at any time 'avoided' the negative consequences that came from my seeking help when I was concerned that my failure to do so would eventually lead to a poor judgement.  I held myself to a higher standard than those about me.   I was 'offered' ways 'around' the 'system'. I was told I could 'deny, deny, deny, and lie, lie, lie' .  Those close to me who had been 'caught' actually have used lawyers successfully to avoid consequences.  Seriously people have told me over and over again what a fool I have been for my honesty.

 I appreciate Justin's  honesty therefore.  I appreciate that the laws are wrong. There are many law which we don't agree with but there is a sharp division between the law breakers and those who don't.  At least there once was. I don't appreciate that so many criminal drug dealers got rich by being smart and have 'cleaned up their act' by whitewashing their past. I know so many incredibly wealthy people whose wealth has come directly from the multi billion dollar drug crime industry.    I'm a hopeless idealist and romantic. I have a horrible scar of cynicism.

There but for the grace of God go I. I am not here to "judge" Justin Trudeau. The country of Canada has accepted that a man of acknowledged deceitfulness and drug abuse is acceptable in the highest position. The former head of the Supreme Court of Canada was a roaring alcoholic or had a bit of a problem with drink (depending on what language one chose.)  But he wasn't engaged in criminal activities.  He wasn't a law breaker, that I know of.  Unlike Justin Trudeau and his mother and a minority of Canadians.

I've been arguing for years that our judges need to be random drug tested if we're doing that to our athletes, doctors and pilots.  There's a double standard. There's hypocricy that reigns.

I'm just struggling today wondering how I'm going to do my job. I'm kind of regretting too accepting the considerable abuse I experienced in recovery.  The stigma and shame and being shamed so seriously by my superiors who I learned later were drunkards and did more drugs than I'd ever done. It's such a hidden epidemic. Meanwhile the minimization and deceit is rampant.

That's what I remember most about when I had the occasional toke.  I didn't think there was anything wrong with it.  I just thought everyone should 'lighten up'.  Hell, I hoped everyone would 'light up'.

And it will get worse.

I see Justin Troudeau, not as others do but because of my own journey and the journey I have seen others on, I see the double standard. I wonder how I can cause people to lose their incomes and jobs and future and families by saying, it's because of the drugs ,when doing drugs has won Clinton, Obama and now Justin Trudeau their highest positions.  How can I say to kids not to smoke dope.  At least President Bush got recovery.  Mayor Ford got recovery.  Most of Hollywood got recovery.  But not these guys.

It's confusing for me.  It worries me.  I'm struggling today.  I don't really care that much if the Liberals beat the Conservatives because they're two sides of a very centrist coin. I'd rather the Liberals over the NDP but truthfully I'd really rather have had Mr. Mulcair Prime Minister over Justin Trudeau.  Tom Mulcair wasn't creepy.  But I'm probably wrong.

I did this silly little study and asked a hundred or more dope smokers and drug addicts and straights if they wanted their pilot or physician to be smoking marijuania.  They answered unanimously that they didn't want him smoking marijuana.

Now I have the head of a multi trillion dollar business called Canada admitting to smoking dope, not once, not twice, but countless times.  We don't accept the 'word' of a doctor that he isn't smoking dope. We don't accept the word of a criminal that he isn't doing crime.  We drug test and find that countless, a very very high percentage of people who have ever used drugs, lie.

This is my personal problem.  It's a problem I have with Canada today.  It's a problem I have with our justice sytem.  It's a problem I have with the supreme court. It's a problem I have with the police.  It's a problem I have with authority. It's certainly a problem I have with the rich and privileged and those above the law.  It's a problem I have with double standards.   Its a problem I have with Justin Trudeau and his dynamic twisted family.

Maybe I'm just envious too. I've thought of that.

But this is why I didn't vote for Justin Trudeau more than anything else.  That's the best I can get to the matter of why I will support him as Prime Minister but I don't think I'll trust him. I won't trust him even as much as I trusted his father.  But I was younger when I voted for his father. I find it harder to trust today. I've been personally hurt by marijuana, drug dealers, tobacco companies, and especially drug addicts and twisted authorities and their sick double standard attitudes. I don't trust easily today. I don't trust Justin Troudeau.

I hope though that as Prime Minister he will earn my trust.But right now he has made countless promises. And I know drug addicts are the best people at making promises.

So I don't expect he will subject himself to random drug testing.  Even the Supreme Court expects that of others but won't submit themselves to that.  I would only ask that he make the one promise that really counts to me.

Justin, can you promise not to smoke dope any time during your reign as Prime Minister.  Really, if you talk the talk, can you walk the walk!

Social Housing and Nimbyism

The Neighbour began violently banging on the walls at 6 am. I was quietly dressing to catch a cross country flight.  The banging went on for 10 minutes and was so forceful as to cause the pictures to fall off the wall.  My friend, who I was staying over with said,
“That’s the neighbour, she’s always banging on the walls and ceiling.  Everyone has complained.  I’ve even complained to the super.  Nothing is done."
Suddenly the banging is on the door.  My friend opens her door.  She is tired and in her housecoat. The neighbour is wide eyed, crazy, yelling.
“Stop banging on my walls,” she shouts.  My friend holds up her arm to stop the young woman from barging into her suite.  She backs up screaming ‘Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me.”  Every action, every statement is an sophisticated attack. She, the aggressor, is positioning herself as the victim.  “You bang on my walls every morning at 8:30.” It’s 6 am I’ve been getting ready quietly so as not to disturb my friend.  She usually leaves for work before 8:30.  But that isn’t the point, is it.  This is a distraction.  She’s attacking here and now.
My psychiatrist mind has flipped into gear because of the danger she presents. She’s either psychotic or a sophisticated borderline sociopath.  She’s sweating profusely. That could be from the banging or she may be in withdrawal.  Her irritability could be heroin withdrawal but such paranoid projection is more common with marijuana psychosis, crystal meth or heroin psychosis. My crystal meth patients become like this.
Of course she doesn’t look like the stereotype of the mentally ill or addicted. She’s well groomed, maybe 40’s, plain but not unnattractive.  My friend says she has a job.  The rent for suites here is standard Vancouver , well over a thousand. It’s a nice neighbourhood but no neighbourhood is safe from drugs or even sociopaths.
The whole idea of ’social housing’ has the drug addicted and ex convicts increasingly housed in nice communities because such orderly civilized environments ameliorate the insanity and violence of these populations. It’s like the distribution of difficult children in normal classrooms. The normal students provide structure for the ill mannered.  The alternative is the ghetto. The Vancouver Downtown Eastside is a breeding grounds for crime, violence, drug addiction and insanity.
Government agencies, civil and human rights associations, ex convict advocacy activists, mental health agencies, families of the ex convicts and the mentally ill, all serve to get their individual concerns cared for in the best of districts. At the other end of the spectrum the rich and privileged don’t accept ‘social housing’.  They have gated communities. They are protected by their wealth.  The middle class can no longer afford the same so increasingly they’ve turned to Nimbyism.  Not In My Back Yard.
The whole idea of ’social housing’ developed 50 years ago.  That was the height of community movements, middle class values, law and order. The police and authorities in general were widely supported by the citizens.  So many of the adults had returned from World War II.  They had seen up close what ‘chaos’ was like.  They’d seen or heard about the concentration camps. The Jewish doctors, gay composers, ethnic minorities and anyone different had been gassed.  The Soviets had raped everyone in their ‘liberation" especially teen age girls and boys.  After the long nightmare, everyone wanted peace and order.
It’s 2015.  The police have no authority.  My police friend left the force when she said “I set out to be a crime fighter.  I was reduced to being a ‘crime recorder’.  Police are simply not allowed to do anything. When they catch criminals red handed  rich lawyers  get privileged judges to let their clients off on a ‘technicality’. “  Justice is a revolving door.
I treat victims of physical sexual violence. They’ve lost limbs. They have nightmares for years.  They’re still in treatment for the horrifying consequences of their assaults when the criminals are being released back into the community.  They’re terrified. Some of my patients are the victimizers. They’re terrifying.
Increasingly the judges, once the admired back bone of society are being exposed by the rapacious media.  Everywhere the media exposes to the masses the one bad apple and demands an enquiry into the whole barrels. There’s no money for front line resources so police and mental health care givers are forever forced to cut corners or ignore all the while million dollar enquiries make everyone rich writing up more plans and protocols that no budget has resources to address.. Media logic goes like this.   One northern judge in British Columbia was caught for pedophlia so all judges are pedophiles. The former head of the Supreme Court of Canada was a slurring alcoholic so all judges are drunks and alcoholics.  The judges increasingly are throwing the police under the bus, more concerned apparently with popularity than justice.    Everyone in authority knows there will be no one to protect them in retirement.  When the police learned that the proposed new gun laws for disarm police on retirement suddenly the police were no longer en mass in favour of highly restrictive gun laws.  All those in the know want to be living in a gated community. Private security firms prosper like never before.
The industry of housing as “mental health and addiction’ treatment simply  takes the money from true treatment, psychiatrists, physicians,  nurses, psychologists, addictionists, counsellors, standardized scientific therapies and certified treatment facilities and certified recovery houses with treatment components. They give the money instead to ’slum landlords’. These smart businessmen raise the ‘rent’ on their unliveable facilities because they’re overnight called ’social housing.  When the tenants destroy them the landlords give the repair bills to the health care system.  When the facilities are repaired to a liveable state they rent them out at high priced Vancouver prices to ‘normal’ people who now will live in these improved bed bug and cockroach free apartment complexes. The money designated for addiction has paid for the upgrades.
Meanwhile with ‘social housing’ the violent, the insane and the drug addicted are distributed through communities. They’re ’somebody’ else’s problem”.
Psychiatrist used to be able to ‘committ’ for treatment the mentally ill who were violently insane and destructive in the community. Yet today the government has closed down all the asylum and mental health beds with the result that there are simply no resources. The ‘bar’ for admission to a psychiatric facility is raised so high that even psychotic schizophrenics who publicly chop off the heads of their neighbours are quickly discharged  free in the community.  The assumption is that these patients are taking medications that will stop them from being violent. The trouble is that there are so few resources that when patients stop taking medications its often months or another violent episode before anyone notices that they are no longer getting their monthly injections or following up with the treatment team.  The sex offenders from the criminal system are similarly placed in the community with marvellous ‘parole’ and ‘probation’ idealized recommendations.  These pretty documents no doubt make judges feel good about their ‘intent’. The trouble is with no jails and no community staff and castrated  police and a thoroughly unnaccountable destructive deceitful media and vigilantte Facebook justice, there’s no follow through in fact.
When I said to the crazy lady, “You were the one hammering on the wall. We both heard you and you need to leave.”  She shouted spitting in my face, “Shut the fuck up you fucking old man.”  I backed away.
I am old. I’m in my 60’s.  My friend is in her 50’s.  She’s focused her life on health care administration and raising children. She has no training in dealing with criminals or psychotics or violent young women who know all the angles and claim they’re the victim. They have a monopoly of victimship and can bring massive beaurocratic  governmental to bear on kindly innocent people like my friend, the sweet older quiet lady, who has never harmed anyone.  Everyone she has ever met will speak to her good manners and respect for others and loving nature. This woman likely has a rap sheet a mile long. Yet the courts and agencies no longer respect individual histories. Everyone is equal before the law.  Character doesn’t count in the courts. In the street Vigillante justice runs on how many people you know and how many hits you can get on Facebook by taking a video out of context.  Just be sure to sound politically correct.
I work in the mental health and addiction field.  People like her don’t ‘just happen’.  She had all the ‘lingo’ rehearsed.  The best defence is an offence.  She was like Hitler where claimed his destructive tank blitzkriegs were ‘defence.’  Politically correctness is all in the language. Get the right marketing jingo and everyone will believe you should pick up the lump end by the clean end and that this clean end exists and is apparent to all.  The neighbour went from loud to catastrophic. She’s a ticking bomb, a social terrorist. Now’s she’s hammering on walls and ceilings and doors. What will she do next.  My  friend admits that everyone in the building is afraid of her.  She certainly frightened me.
I’ve always been afraid of drug addicts. I know the neuroscience of drug addiction. I’ve watched my little cockapoo dog growl defensively, whenever anyone delirious on marijuana, crack or crystal meth approaches. Animals sense the unpredictability of people who are emotionally anaethetized  bubble boys and girls. These people are able to inflict all manner of emotional and physical trauma without feeling anything in return because they’re drugged.  They’re also always the ‘victim’. Right.
Theres’ a tug of war between the rich with ‘gated communities’ and the new ‘bunker houses’. These two or more story bunker houses were all the rage in medieval towns. Then a family home had to stand against the riots that plagued the city.   Few if any small windows on the lower floor with the big windows on the second or third floor. Reinforced doors.  That’s what the rich have begun to demand.
Barricaded private complexes are a response to the increasing decline of law and order. The public structures are all but collapsing into increasing chaos and brute force rule.  If my friend hadn’t put up her hand to stop this woman pushing her way forward she might well have barged in. Bullies take advantage when they see weakness.     This neighbour would have phoned the police  too and claimed she’d been assaulted if it was one on one. The first come first serve justice system gives the edge to the complainant.  Criminals and frequent fliers know the system.  Everyone knows in Canada that ‘false allegations’ are standard but that there’s never any consequence.  As one judge asked about slander said, “everyone lies in court, it’s my job to assess whose lying more.”
Everyone doesn’t lie and no judge can do what lie detector tests and countless psychological scientific studies have proved.  But what we do know in psychopaths can act better than the innocent. The innocent are no longer the victims.  Everyone is the new ‘victim’.  "Nobody is right when everyone is wrong."  The criminals all know the system and rule because frankly there is no other authority.
“Shut the fuck up you fucking old man!”
There is lawlessness here and now.  The question is when will the media do it’s job and report that.  Will parliaments and congress make the pendulum swing back to the centre. Will judges be supported in making the tough decisions.  Will the rich want to face the ‘peasants’ again.  Have they so quickly forgotten what saying ‘give them cake’ caused.  Do the corporate czars really think they can protect themselves from the Lennins of this world.  The middle classes, the truthful,  the educated, the professionals, the artisans, the engineers, the businessmen, all those whose represent the meritocracy, will they be protected because they don’t do well in chaos. The Pol Pot killed the doctors and university teachers first then killed half the country later throwing a once thriving country into the dark ages.
Hitlers first act was to make the Brown Shirts. The brown shirts became his personal army. They were made up of pedophiles, drug addticts, criminally insane and sociopaths, bullies.
A day doesn’t go by when I don’t hear of a person being brutalized by their neighbours.  The real fear of investing a million dollars in a Vancouver property is not the predicted tsunami and earthquakes but more importantly the very reall possibility of the dangerous or just offensive neighbour.  I know of dozens and dozens of such cases.
Personally I’ve lived the last few years in what is essentially a gated community.  After hearing so often of such complaints I witnessed first hand what is perhaps best called ‘evil’.  When the psychotic is powerful there is little language to capture the depth of insanity one must face.
I feel sorry for my friend.  I get to leave.  Her sleep has been disturbed many nights.  My day began with a threatening confrontation which my friend says is routine, If she’s not banging on her door she’s banging on the woman above her, the man beside her, shouting in the halls or threatening people coming through the vestibule with her.  She’s clearly way out of control and has been for a very long time.  No one is a bout to control her soon because frankly the system will punish the good rather than engage with this evil.  The system lacks the mechanism, resolve or even the intelligence to address it.  It’s not an individual.  It’s a disease.
If it’s not in your neighbourhood.  It’s coming.  It is coming to your neighbourhood.  

Vancouver TENT CITY

Oppenheimer Park in the Downtown East Side of Vancouver is now TENT City.  After Occupy Vancouver with countless civilly  disobedient or just 'above the law' people living rent free in downtown Vancouver, TENT City, another 'rent free vacation development'  has sprung up.  "Activists" need vacations too.
Vancouver ‘real estate’ is so expensive that most working people in Vancouver cannot ‘own’ property.   The DTES is to Vancouver like the centre of London, or Paris, or Manhatten. It is the most expensive, most desirable real estate in British Columbia, certainly Canada and perhaps the NorthWest.  Nearby 800 square foot condos are priced at a half million a year.
In Oppenheimer Park, dozens and dozens of 100's square foot tents are enjoying the glorious summautumn in Vancouver.  One of my favourite beaches is three blocks away.  China Town is but a couple of blocks away.  There a lovely walk ways and all manner of conveniences within steps from this park that has it’s own washroom facility in addition the porta potty arrangements that the city has provided. Public transportation connects this central 'hub' of the city to all of Downtown Vancouver.  There is a quick trade in stolen bicycles in this area as well expanding the possibilities of urban community luxury living. People are discouraged from doing drugs and alcohol in Tent City but there is really no need since there's a high density of bars in the area desperate for the 'welfare cheques' issues every 2 weeks for housing.  Free food is provided throughout the community by every manner of charitable organization.
Nearby , a block away, is Main and Hastings.  This is the most notorious of thoroughfares in the city.  During ‘rush hour’ traffic all the city’s north Vancouver commute along with other streams of commuters go through this ‘choke’ point.  Every day drug addicted ‘zombies’ stagger about on Hastings proudly disregarding cross walks and even an extra traffic light to reduce ‘dangerous’ jay walking, dancing seizing and jeering masses some of who now sleep off their party time in TENT City.
No fences have been put up to curtail the flagrant disregard for law and proud disrespect for the police but instead Mayor Robertson has ‘punished’ all the working commuters by reducing the traffic speed through this “drug city” zone to 30 km/hr. He has even provided bike lanes in the district for the easy commutes by those who flee police on their stolen bicycles.
If a walking zombie hits your car and is injured you will, and people have been charged with assault or even manslaughter.  Indeed there are even those who appear as zombies but walk into cars to feign assault and collect the high insurance premiums off the working legitimate law abiding folk of Vancouver.   Mayor Robertson hates law abiding working citizens especially those  who drive cars and this daily survive this futuristic drug infested  "obstacle course’ , his murky idea ‘enlightened' urban planning.
Tens of thousands of Vancouver workers, unable to afford to live in Vancouver, but working in Vancouver, drive their cars past this DTES holiday vacation centre reserved by the Mayor for ecstatic zombie jerking staggering drug users and their exaltant drug dealer priests.
In the centre of this section is the Safer Injection Site “Insite”, a bastille for the heroin trade where anyone can walk in with their street bought adulterated high priced heroin and shoot up with the prettiest,  youngest high paid nurses and assistants watching them so that for this one time they can be safe and the world of youth in Canada can believe injecting heroin is a 'safe' alternative to the 'natural high' of life.  For years this Safer Injection Site has been in the news distracting all public attention from the crime that it fosters and the heavy death toll it's perpetuation of heroin addiction supports.  Years too late it has now introduced a 'detox' site 'window dressing' to maintain it's stronghold on the centre of the DTES where it's Cathedral of Drug Addiction crucifies anyone who questions it's 'validity'.
 There has been literally no ‘change’ in the number of deaths as a consequence of this multi million dollar media ‘drug culture’ celebration centre.  The ‘research’ is suspect at best and highly embarrassing despite it's left wing popularity. The whole ‘centre’ is not science but wholly politics and religion. This is  ‘church of heroin’s’ central cathedral.
Tent city Is three blocks away.  Drugs are discouraged in TENT City.  Heroin addicts must walk down   the centre of Hastings Street disrupting traffic through Main disrupting traffic up one block and over two.  All the while drug dealers, the high priests of the drug culture religion, watch over them and  kowtow with corrupt officials in the Downtown Eastside.
We are still looking for the millions of dollars that Vancouver Coastal Health Officials gave the Portland Hotel Society leadership.  Linda Evans and Mark Townsend, the defrocked Cardinals of the DTES drug trade, laying low in their million dollar Vancouver homes having taken the fall for NEST of the Drug Addicted Religion of the DTES.  Jenny Quan, the NDP leader who was caught red handed with tens of thousands of dollars of bribe and kickback money which “my husband and the dingo made me take” has reappeared after her vacation after her Disneyland vacation.
Mayor Robinson promised housing for the DTES.  Vancouver Coastal Health and others after taking their cut for handling money, gave this to Portland Hotel Society.  Portland Hotel Society naturally did make a few spaces available at high cost of development and maintenance, government costs similar to the defence industry, but the short fall that went to UPTOWN Housing for Linda Evans and Mark Townsend and their Nest is why TENT CITY exists. Why these people are in Oppenheimer Park and not in the backyard of Mark Townsend, Linda Evans and Jenny Quan makes no sense.  Indeed, why the tents aren’t on the NDP headquarters property is a major concern. The NDP leadership was using the housing money for trips to Disneyland. Why spend Canadian dollars in Canada when it’s so much more fun to spend them out of the country where there are fewer witnesses.
People complain about the number of prisons and the for profit prisons of the United States but those working and living and paying rent or owning property in the DTES often express the sentiment that they're living in the prison.  If not a prison, then certainly an Asylum.
Some say Tent City will go when the Vancouver Monzoons come.  The activists won't want to be there when the lawns destroyed by the tents turn to mud.
 Heroin use is rising in young Canadians.  Canada has the greatest percentage of young people in the western world using pot. An adolescent using pot daily is 60 times less likely to complete high school than a drug free student.  Holland and Amsterdam have outlawed BC Bud.  Portugal has reduced it’s drug addiction by rigid ‘treatment’ requirements, decriminalization, but heavy ‘requirement for treatment’.  Sending people to jail doesn’t work. Look at Mark Emory. He’s grown rich on pot sales.  Had he been mandated to a drug free, urine tested,  2 year treatment program all the research suggests that even he might be abel to experience  a ‘natural high’ . As it is there are no John Denver songs being sung in TENT CITY. Marc Emory is running for Liberal Leadership alongside the smoking Liberal Leader Justin Troudeau and his smoking mother and smoking' wife.
Personally i’m too old for TENT CITY.   With the rising cost of gas and the commute , moving an RV into Oppenheimer Park seems like the only way for me.  Old People and maybe Vets for protection might well benefit from a downtown RV City.   Everyone wants to live in Vancouver. Most pay millions to have the privilege but why bother when you can do it for free with all manner of amenities  most working folk in Vancouver have difficulty affording.

Vancouver Thieves

Out walking Gilbert this morning. Half dozen guys gathered in the parking lot.
"We've had thieves," one said to me.
"My cooler was stolen."
"New batteries were taken right out of the box of my truck."
"I just set down some luggage and was going back to get it. This guy was walking off with it. I called out for him to stop and got it. I was just unloading my car and this guy was taking the stuff."
I know that's normal in Vancouver. Even the head of the RCMP and the Chief of the Vancouver police are more concerned about complaints from criminals about police use of bad language than the city being safe from crime. Everyone I know tells a tale of theft and mayhem. Assaults are common too. But no one reports anything any more. Police say they aren't allowed to fight crime in Vancouver and their only job is to 'record' crime.
Two friends describe recurrent thefts to their property which resulted not in criminals being caught but in them being denied insurance.
The principal theft in the city is associated with the drug trade. A heroin addict needs roughly $300 a day for their habit not to mention the crack and other drugs. Since the exchange rate on stolen property is on 10 cents on the dollar this means that each heroin addict must steal $3000 dollars a day 356 days of the year. That translates into roughly a million dollars a n addict a year in theft.
The best treatment for individual and society is the methadone maintenance program. The best legal response is the Vancouver Drug Court. Yet the Vancouver Drug Court despite it's high success compared to traditional 'punishment' models is the least funded of services despite having the most enlightened judges and the greatest success rate addressing theft and crime.
The city collectively is losing dozens of minutes per day per citizen working because they can't even put a shopping bag down beside a cart without risk of these legions of thieves picking it up. Everyone, myself included, wastes an inordinate amount of time locking and checking and placing cameras and such to attempt to compete against the criminals whose full time occupation is to steal from the workers of the city.
Over the years there have been a variety of measures taken to address theft in communities, certainly community service and repayment of the debts to individuals and society is high on the list in communities that have gone beyond barbarism. Thousands of years past cities used 'banishment' from the city to reduce crimes of theft. Clearly I consider it a priviledge to live in Vancouver on the west coast in a kind climate compared to Yellowknife but should we not support the police and simply have those people who have had recurrent theft charges have their right to be in the city removed until their pay their debts to those they have stolen from. 
The notion of 'gated communities' has been ridiculed as a place where theives know the location but historically people had to be able to show reason to be in 'areas' of cities.  Interestingly in the 1800's in Milan Italy, the famous Gallerina Centre was developped as a 'safe shopping site'.  In the Pentagon no one enters without a pass.  Clearly some areas of the city could be considered 'theft free' and people with a history simply not allowed to enter.  Yet that brings to mind the Scarlet Letter debate as a means to identy crime and criminals.  Where does one draw the line. What does work.
The beauty of drug treatment is that a thieve who steals from innoscent people is by addressing their drug dependency taking 'action' to address their 'theiving'.
Of course not all drug dependent are theives and some theives are simply psychopaths and sociopaths. But then society has to really question it's fundamental attitudes towards multiculturalism as a leading provincial representative argues that it is 'ethnocentric' of the 'majority' population to impose it's views against theft on a 'culture' who have use thieving as their main means of survival.
First Nations people rarely speak about their historic and traditional 'punishments' for offences against the tribe. All manner of highly objectionable punishment occured within different tribal systems.  Theft between tribes was celebrated at times where as theft between individuals was as much as an offense as today.  The notion of communal ownership or the idea that we don't 'own' but 'borrow' the land still causes anger and fear in children who having 'borrowed' something take offence at someone else 'borrowing' it back. In general if a man stole the Chief's head dress for instance, there would be hell to pay. Commonly death sentences were the norm  in many of the 'cultures' that make up Canada yet in 'multicultural' Canada we reject this.  
As a Christian I noted that the first deaths in Christian history in the Christian community were recorded in Acts when a man and woman died as a consequences of stealing from the communal group.
My Christian childhood neighbourhood didn't require locks on the door and we didn't lock our bicycles and we didn't know theft. I miss that world where I wasn't constantly looking over my back worrying if I locked my computer, my car, and afraid to set down a bag beside a car for fear it will be snatched.  I miss a world in which people trusted each other and collectively no one stole and respected each other's boundaries and property.
Personally I think it's time for the Bible to returned to the classroom. If not then lets have a review of the multicultural laws regarding 'theives' and do something more 'effective' than we are. What are the new "morality and ethics' classes doing and are they as effective?  I don't believe it's at all Canadian to be a thief and it's fundamentally against Canadian Culture to Steal. Canadians believe collectively 'thou shalt not steal'.  The problem lies not with the collective culture but rather what one does to achieve this agreed principle of living.s
People are not 'stealing for food'. This is not a "Jean Val Jean" times. There is so much 'food' in the downtown eastside that people are trading the sweet stuff for drugs. Theft remained a major concern in Communist Russia and continues to be a major concern in Communist China.  The extent of theft in these anti religion secular theocracies is probably greater than in traditional non ideological societies.I don't steal because to steal would be to steal from God and hurt my very soul. The 10 commandments say 'thou shalt not steal'. That's Hebrew, Christian, and Moslem. The Buddhists and Hindus believe that a thief will come back without hands in the next life. Karma is a the consequence of theft but in the countries with the highest density of buddhists or hindus theivery is punished worse than it is in an Christian country. It appears even in countries which believe in reincarnation no one is ready to wait for the criminals to get their just desert in the next life. This is no different in Judeo Christian society where we believe that theives will burn in hell but historically were happy to chop off their hands, burn them in oil or send them to Australia before God got his licks in . First Nations killed theives just as most pagan cultures. Indeed Christians and Jews collectively in the world have the greatest history of mercy despite their otherwise tough approach to sin.
Dr. Johnson was paraphrased by Bob Dylan in that great philosophical theological treatise "I and I',  "steal a little and they put you in jail, steal alot and they make you king".  Theft then has been a matter of the most powerful nations taking from less powerful nations but within these nations at the neighbourly level there is still the sanctions surrounding theft. It might be alright for the King, Queen or Commissar to steal since as in  "Animal Farm" some animals are more 'equal' than others.
Faced with the theives in Vancouver I really do wonder how people are raising their children. Historically in many cultures in the east the parents and family are held accountable for the thefts of children with the consequence that the community approach to crime is found most effective.   This proved a highly effective collective strategy which might well be considered in our individualist culture.
Possibly if we got it together to address theft at the parking lot and back yard and office level then we'd really be in a place to be righteously indignant about CEO's and Banksters stealing massive amounts of pensioner funds and the bottles out of the babies of the nations mouths.
Personally in Vancouver I've had my houses broken into despite cameras and locks, my cars and trucks broken into repeatedly, (car insurance never has paid for the loss or more importantly the cost in time dealing with broken glass and such) ,  my boat broken into, an office staff who turned out to be a psychopath lying and stealing but actually admitting her theft to the police without any consequence to her, ultimately costing me $50,000 because of corruption in the system,  despite her chronic history of theft and deceit and my being 'targetted' by her,  several computers have over the years been  stolen from work, though thankfully no confidential data loss. Still  I fear putting through insurance claims though I've had hundreds of thousands of dollars stolen in my life time and pay roughly tens of thousands of dollars insurance a year. What a waste of a life!!!! Why should any one get a job and build and create if theives can come and take without consequence?  That's what I 'feel' some days and 'emotional reasoning' dictates. Yet when I talk to friends and neighbours they describe similiarly horrific experiences yet continue to muddle on. The power of good people to persist with so little support from the authorities and so many psychopaths and sociopaths parasitizing them remains utterly astonishing. I learn from construction company executives that they have horrendous losses from theft but just "soldier on".  Society grows and people generally prosper. Our lives are longer and never before in time were as many as rich as they are today. 
Several gang members who I've known over the years in work or riding my Harley have told me that just as there are private schools and a private postal system and Canadians cross the border for private health care in the US (our longstanding 2 tier medical system) there has always been an alternative 'police' system provided by 'private' services. I've spoken with many people from ethnic communities who have no faith in the Canadian 'services' and they admit that they aren't concerned about the RCMP or Vancouver Police because some member is caught on video kicking someone.
They just don't think the Canadian police will get their stuff returned or do anything but "record" crime. Japanese society and America in the times of the Kennedy's certainly had an 'arrangement' with the so called 'criminal forces' of the world and times.  Given the example of the Rolling Stones concert with 'private' security services that became more dangerous than the crowds needing 'security' control ultimately ruined what could have been a truly great concert.  Sadly there are simply too many people who feel entitled to what Mick Jagger has without realizing the tremendous work he does.
 It does appear that there is a vacuum of law enforcement regarding 'theft'.  Theft is now considered a 'virtue' by the kids raised in schools without Bibles in court rooms without Bibles in a world where work is for suckers and theft is what the smart one do.  But Plato and Socrates didn't condone theft any more than Moses or God.  So all societies have to judge themselves on how well they protect those who create.
It's hard to start the day and go to work when my neighbours are collectively standing about in a parking lot 'frustrated'. I see the leading news story by the head of the RCMP is that the 'culture' of the policing must change. I know I'm old fashioned but I'm of the belief generally that the police and citizens are frustrated because the countries leadership is living on a different planet and watching too much You Tube and not hearing the frustration people have who are doing everything to work and pay taxes but are routinely having stuff stolen. Break and entries, cars, purses, and offices theived. Why should anyone go to work in Vancouver when theft is so much easier and clearly in Vancouver has little consequences.  Crime pays and the police, if not their politically correct  leadership  would truly like to do something about it.  In these economically difficult times can we really afford to put political correctness over protection of person and property.

British Columbia has the greatest property crime in Canada second only to the N.W.T.   Some 5,600 property crimes per 100,000.  This doesn't even touch the full extent of crime as so little of the total is reported.  What's most infuriating as a tax payer is that when ever I am robbed I am invariably 'blamed' for it as if the beaurocrats and insurance people and indeed the police themselves aren't all in this same mess together with me. I feel like Job talking to these morons whenever I've been violated and something has been stolen knowing full well that they cannot be immune from theft as I despite my best efforts have experienced it repeatedly in this city where property crime is literally ubiquitous.  
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Cannibis Addicted Fetus

"It's so sad to hear their wee high pitches cries," when they're born addicted to marijuana, he told me.  They're shaking and go into withdrawal.  He was a pediatrician at a conference I was attending.  We knew smoking was harmful to the fetus. Nicotine is a teratogen but now it was evident that marijuana was causing fetal distress.
Child abuse by drug addiction is a concern with 12 to 24% of mothers using drugs and alcohol in pregnancy.  With marijuana though the 'withdrawal phase' post delivery is particularly unnerving. The babies shake just like opiate withdrawing infants, an obstetrician described.
I am on a plane right now and hope when I've time to investigate this more.  The difficulty I recently had with searching information regarding the increasing dangers to physical and mental health associated with marijuana use was that a very poor small number unsupported outdated research on marijuana was dominating the servers. Clearly there are reputable studies documenting the dangers and risks which are well known to us in the medical community who observe the problems and show more caution than the mercantile business and political interests.  The spam in favour of marijuana simply swamps the google servers so that I am forced to use medical and university sites to find research that is not of the most spurious kind.  Given the influx of pharmaceutical marijuania too there is less interest in the industry which has hopped on board big money marijuana.
http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/978492-overview
 

SV Giri at dock - Journal

Yesterday my lip swelled up like I'd had botox injection before a Mick Jagger look alike contest. Cellulitis.  I took antibiotics and antiiflammatories after a couple of days and increasing pain.  Now the tide's turned and I'm not having fluid slide out of the side of my mouth when I drink soda from a can.  If I had silicone breasts or penis enlargement or botox lips I'd expect I'd get used to it. Like those supposedly primitive people who started the trend putting plates in their lips and 'enhanced' their bodies with equally sublime entertainment. I'm just thankful for the antibiotics.  Being Mick Jagger isn't all it's cut out to be.
The boat is gently rocking. The sun has come out. My mood is better. I've finished reading the western novel I picked up. Nothing like Robert B. Parker to uplift one.  I'm drinking a Sanpellegrino blood orange beverage. Laura is in the head cleaning herself. She just cleaned the freezer after my friends working here let meat and whatever else spoil in it.  I have to get a refridgerator guy down here to look at the wiring and also add more junk to the compressor. I've done this a couple of times myself in the past.  Right now I have a report due for  work and 5 hours of a course to complete.  I'm bushed with another sick weekend wondering when I'll have a holiday without being sick.  Commiserated with a patient last week who had used up her vacation time as sick time after her sick time had run out.  Remember when I was in India and found out that people generally got 2 weeks off and if they weren't better someone else got their job.
Thousands more into the boat.  Boat world: "If you think about buying a boat, first stand in a shower tearing up $100 bills and watching them go down the drain. If you like the experience you'll be ready to buy a boat."
I was at the Mosquito Creek Marina yesterday.  We drove the boat back here after it had been on the hard getting the shaft seals replaced along with the bottom zincs with new epoxy and antifouling done.  Boat was back at it's regular cruising speed and handling like a ship not a barge.  I felt comfortable in the Mosquito Creek Marina.  It's a community. Here I'm in an industrial site.  No restrictions on boat work so it's fine for now but I miss the community "out of the city in the city" feel that goes with the recreational marinas.
So much I could be doing on the boat.  Top decks need a new paint job. All the ropes need cleaning. The netting and lines around the boat need repair and cleaning. Even the upholstery in the boat would benefit from some replacement where the cat's claws have done their damage. I do miss Angel at times .
As soon as one thing is fixed a dozen other things that need improvement come to mind. Mostly it's the cosmetics now. The main functional boat improvements have been taken care of these last couple of years.
Gilbert is stretching.  I was up at 4:30 am with a sore mouth and took him for a walk on the dock. He pooped and returned feeling better. I read until noon and napped.  I made toast early and ate this marvellous Sechelt jam on toast I was given.  Later Laura made fried egg sandwiches.  It's good to hear from my brother Ron that Dad is better. I like seeing what the nephews are up to on Facebook  Andrew is up near the arctic and Graham is making movies out east, doing a day of shopping with Allan.
We've talked about going to Canadian tire today.  We'd planned to be out on the water but the heavy rain deterred us. Then tomorrow there's a service for the newcomers who have joined the church. I'm one of those , changing churches last year, because this church welcomed my working dog, Gilbert. I thought I should come up to the altar and accept the welcome.  Having attention placed on me almost caused me to consider joining another church but it's purely voluntary.  It's the least I can do.  I tend to just be thankful there's a place to go that's welcoming.  I've participated in churches alot in the past, held roles and taken office but these days it's all I can do to make as many services as I can and be thankful. I feel it's a daily battle to be a doctor in Canada, it takes all my energy, so it's hard  to get out in public on the weekend.  The anger, entitlement and fear is palpable these days with the growing economic crisis.
Two more people were belligerent and threatening last week.  One didn't pass a urine test and proceded to blame me for their using drugs.  Very hostile threatening, lots of swearing and calling me down. I was exhausted.  It's all you can do to get out of the room to safety.  They know they can hit you and yet if you hit back you're in trouble, even in self defence.  The government living in another galaxy and another time zone protected by denial and pomposity blame you for 'upsetting' patients. At the same time you have to inform them their urine is 'positive' and that there are consequences. That's when they take it personally and figure if they shout and swear and slam doors they will change your reaction. It doesn't but it always reminds me  of the times I've been hit practising medicine outside of the boardroom, the kickings and the punches,  the time I was held hostage, the time my dog was murdered and the days my windows were shot out or the late night phone calls and phone threats.  It's part of the work. If a person's job, or freedom depends on their not being on drugs and they use they tend to 'blame the messenger'.  The trouble is the 'system' especially the 'authorities', those so far removed from reality they can't find their ass, blame you too.  It's the same with the guys I've committed to hospital. They've come out and accuse me of 'ruining their lives' but I've committed them because they were threatening to 'gut' their girlfriend because their God to them to, or that they were going to kill their boss or the  prime minister.  At these times I miss being a family physician and certainly miss the days of being a psychotherapist to the rich and powerful.
I 'm exhausted in moments by the desire to just walk away or go one on one with them. Thankfully this day the other doctors I was working with were having their bad days as well with one telling me "my guy walked out shouting I was a lousy doctor because I had too many patients and couldn't work fast enough so kept him waiting'.  The other guy had had a relapse too and this guy had blamed the doctor. It would be funny it's so predictable.  The psychosis of drug addiction is that it's everyone else's fault.  And there are all those people protected miles from reality who actually believe that if these people had the right drug or the doctor 'listened' to them, they'd suddenly be better.  I watched this show about women who want murderers and rapists for lovers and stalk them when they're in prison.  When you work like I do saniety is rarer but it's the administration that are sickest because they're so ignorant but grandiose and pompous in their utter stupidity.  They actually believe their lies.
Then the fellow who abused my secretary for my running late,said I was 'just shuffling papers ' and 'disrespected him for not being right on time."  20 minutes.  I try to explain to people that half the people I'm seeing today, a few years back would have been in an institution. That day I'd had a guy threatening to kill himself and everyone else and I'd gone a half hour over ensuring myself that as in all the other times he's been like this it's not serious.  Since I sent another guy to St. Paul's Hospital emergency a couple of months back, he'd said he was suicidal and  jumped in front of the bus , they just discharged him an hour later regardless of his risk to himself or everyone on the bus, I've been a bit overwhelmed by these kinds of threats. Nobody cares anymore.
So many patients talk violence either suicide or homicide and it's a harder and harder call to assess risk  especially when the next visit may be three months away. It was a whole different game when I saw people twice weekly or had some spare time I could see a person in again. All my spare space now is taken up with acutely suicidal people who are facing some crisis or other. I'm trying to change medications in the community with people on a dozen pills seeing half as many specialists and know that at the university they'd never do this sort of thing in the community. It's such an ivory tower with the College who condemns all the doctors and is above the law themselves smug in their superiority.  I miss the old guys who knew what it was like in reality. More and more my compatriots are leaving.  Pharmacists are dispensing medicine.  Doctors right out of school with next to no experience, real experience that is, are going into upper echelon beaurocratic positions because they know not to 'rock the boat' and want a 'safe job'. No one has any time for patients. Those who do are either the 'enemy' or the 'target'.  Not surprising so many doctors now either work with a lawyer at their side or a bodyguard.
I loved hearing the American nobel prize winner for literature say, to paraphrase "I remember when everyone was a citizen, then we became just consumers , and now we're only taxpayers, and that's not even said in a positive way."
Of course I could cherry pick and treat the worried well or go where the money, fame and priviledge is.  The new young doctors are opting for all the 30 hour week salaried glory work but this work I'm doing is really more rewarding.  To actually turn around a suicidal patient and see them get off the death road and take the life path is redemptive.  I corresponded with a woman I saw 20 years ago who'd spent a year suicidal till I met with her and spent weeks with her and her family. She's an amazing woman today.  I love getting the alcoholics and addicts out of the slavery and bondage. It's a miracle. It's like watching a Lazarus experience. I'm where I can help but the bad days are bad.  The sex addicts are a different lot too. Increasingly ,there's always the law sitting right there threatening to throw the doctor in jail if he doesn't protect society. I reported a man whose woman said he had sexually abused his child and now I'm being sued for relaying the woman and child's concern. Some animals are more important than others,  in the Animal Farm, we're living today. If I'd done nothing I might have been damned then too. Damned if we do and damned if we don't by the armchair quarterbacks that have turned this country into a prison where they are the guards and the rest of us inmates.. So many critics.  So many who make the rules but don't abide by the rules and aren't themselves accountable to the rules. Makes me think of Gordon Lightfoot's song Don Quixote. I 'm always charging windmills.  It was what doctors once were supposed to do. Now the abortionsists get the Order of Canada and soon the euthansia folk will be getting the country's top awards as 'doctors'. I'll have to pray more for my enemies especially those authorities calling for the Charge of the Light Brigade all over again. I'll have to get down on my knees more like Martin Luther King said, it's a tough day.
I'm looking forward to my upcoming medical conference IDAA.  Always this time of year I'm spiritually bankrupt and then I usually perk up after spending time with the people I know there who really make being a physician seem worth it. I'm so honoured to be among a group of psychiatrists there who I can truly admire as they too care and are themselves struggling with the same concerns I have.   It's gets back to whether I'm a spiritual being living in a material world or just a material being and the one with the most money and toys is the best.  The judge I met this spring was just such a TS Eliott Hollow Man and it's so demoralizing to see such people abusing such powerful positions.  Everyday there's more evidence of the old call of radical fascism or communism masquerading under new names.  

I'm thankful for the sun today. I'm thankful for my boat no longer leaking. I'm thankful for my dog. I'm thankful for my legs and arms and heart and lungs. I'm thankful my lip's size is reducing and the pain is going. I'm thankful it's not raining. I'm thankful I have friends and family who I love dearly. I am thankful for Netflix and the Life tv series I'm enjoying each night now. I'm thankful for the good books I'm finding to read. I'm thankful for the advanced scientific research I'm able to study. I'm thankful for light. I'm thankful for my fingers. I'm thankful for summer clothing. I'm thankful for the ocean. I'm thankful for Vancouver and British Columbia and Canada. I'm thankful for God and Jesus and church and fellowship.  Thank you

Harm Reduction Strategies and Palliative Care

Harm reduction Strategies are all the rage in government health circles. That's where tax payer money is going. The adherents of this religion are in the ascendent and have been for a long time.  It is important to understand that this all has followed on the success of abstinence strategies and spiritual programs that proved addiction was a treatable and curable disease.   It's further not seen purely as an 'individual' treatment as with 'alcoholics anonymous' which was aimed solely at the individual alcoholic.  Harm Reduction Strategies are principally a 'public health program', not a traditional 'therapy' per se.  In traditional medicine 'harm reduction strategies' have been called 'palliative care'.  There is nothing new or sexy in the model despite the 'spin doctors' sales propaganda.
I first studied "Harm reduction' as a Community Medicine resident 25 years ago in my Public Health program.  My Family Practice and Psychiatry training were principally aimed at curative or ameliorative strategies and principally concerned the individual.  We learned and practiced 'harm reduction' and 'palliative care' but only as a 'last resort.' They were never proposed as the 'principal' treatment or 'alternative treatment' or 'primary treatment'.  They were an approach to care when it was thought in most cases 'death was inevitable' and all we could do was to make the person 'comfortable'.
Harm reduction strategies are exceptionally good public health.  Unfortunately they are often 'spun' as the best thing for a patient.  However, it's important to note that patients with addiction are by nature fairly psychotic.  By the standards of the community they are clearly out of touch with reality.  They drink and drug themselves to death and cause major societal concerns and the courts even let them off crimes because their reasoning was impaired.  Indeed the modern MRI shows that reasoning deficits last after a person stops the subtance of abuse approximately 3 months.  Experienced addiction personnel note that the greatest vulnerability for relapse, ie recurrence of the psychotic behaviour, last for at least a year or more.  During this time a person's capacity to judge the 'safety' for themselves of a substance of abuse is subjectively at great variance to the objective reality of friends, family and society at large.
Given this I have actually wondered if addicts shouldn't be assigned lawyers to help them make decisions about their health care in face of the increased pressure on impaired individuals to accept 'harm reduction' which is clearly more beneficial for the community.
Harm Reduction is a Public Health measure that 'colludes' with the patients insaniety about their ability to practice doing heroin 'safely' or drinking 'safely' or smoking 'crack' safely.  The very term 'harm reduction' doesn't suggest 'safely'.  Palliative care was a much more honest term and is used for all other areas of medicine.  So why not in addiction.
In medicine we have a term called 'treatment of choice'. This refers to the treatment that has the highest likelihood of success.  Harm reduction strategies by comparison have the least likelihood of success for the individual however from a public health perspective they may have the greatest appeal.
If there are two programs available, one which is 'curative' and 'abstinence' based for addiction therapy, and one which is 'harm reduction' the former therapy is more costly whereas the latter is 'cheap' by comparison.  In the treatment of appendicitis, surgery is the treatment of choice for the individual however surgeons, surgical theatres, OR nurses, aseptic fields and anesthestists are all terribly expensive.  If one doesn't have surgery a harm reduction approach to appendicitis is to just give antibiotics. This is surely better than nothing and some people indeed get better with this approach alone.
The key here is that 'harm reduction strategies' are cheap.  The principal fear of an insurance monopoly is that the economists and investors would eventually see that the greatest profit lay not in 'curative' therapy but in 'harm reduction' therapy.  Ultimately 'no therapy' becomes harm reduction.  Beurocrats have long known that their greatest rewards come when the emperor has no clothes. In this case, it's the patient.
Never forget that from a public health perspective 'euthanasia' is a 'harm reduction' strategy because it reduces 'harm' to the community.
It's further to be remembered that only the doctors, nurses, health care providers, and not the 'administrators' or 'economists', have codes of ethics that mandate caregivers to put the well being of the individual at least on par with the concerns of the sometimes 'for profit' insurance concerns.
I was trained in harm reduction and palliative care over a quarter of a century ago. I've practiced it ever since. I was further trained in curative and restorative and rehabilitation models and always opt to offer these first.  Some 'harm reduction' and 'palliative care' models actually buy time for an individual waiting to get the 'treatments of choice'.  However increasingly I see 'harm reduction' presented as a 'superior model'  or an 'equal' but 'alternative' model and certainly those 'promoting it' are considered sexier and get paid far more than those in the front lines providing scientifically proven therapeutic care.
This was always a point of contention with the government when it was noted that alcohol and drug counsellors with greater training and equal experience were paid far less than the people selling alcohol in the Canadian government controlled outlets.  Given that our government benefits from the taxes on sales I"m not surprised they want to keep people drinking to the very last sip.  That was the experience we had with the government around smoking until decades after all the 'harm reduction' strategies were used up and the government had moved it's tax base elsewhere did definitive legislation come in that helped individuals and public together.
I just read of the latest harm reduction strategy. It's called "MAP" a rather cute acronymym. It's basically a 'drink your way into sobriety' program like the new 'shoot heroin safely program.'
I express my cynicism because my colleagues who promote them and get such accolades never mention how 'cheap' these services are and also don't care to mention that they are getting the money for these programs from 'therapy' and 'health care' programs that were not specifically allocated for 'public health' or 'law enforcement'.  Indeed, Drug Court is a highly effective 'harm reduction' strategy I fully support but it's funding doesn't detract from family medicine.
The fact is that all the 'tools' in the 'tool box' are what are needed however the 'celebration' of 'harm reduction' and the spin doctoring around it sends a very questionable message to children, and the community at large.  Something about 'palliative' care' never did this.  Mind you I've been highly suspicious of government and beurocratic language since the same folk in the 60's gave us the 'Peace Missile'.  What concerns me is that we will one day have to pay more taxes to clean up after the priorization of harm reduction programs just as we all paid more taxes to clean up the excessive missiles which now are the reason for the excessive costs of security. Government bearocracies have a long documented love for short term success projects that have long term negative consequences.  Their favourite is spend our way out of debt, a political harm reduction program that is causing Greece and others like it a little concern to put it nicely.
There's something to be said for competition in health care insurance.  Harm reduction is necessary and certain harm reduction programs like drug court, and methadone maintenance,  are highly beneficial.
The WHO supports harm reduction but only as a stepping stone to abstinence.  I don't see that being the agenda of many of the programs that are promoted as really 'sexy'.  They seem unfortunately to be putting today's problem off till tomorrow.  That sounds to me like 'let's make the  children and grand children"  pay for the government's spending schemes.  Harm reduction is simply palliative care. Is there a plan as the WHO would demand that these approaches ultimately lead to abstinence or is this just a way to have the government get more of the highly lucrative turf of alcohol marketting and street drug dealing. Great public health but please don't say 'it's for the patient's own good' without ensuring that poor girl or boy has a lawyer representing him.