The Ottawa Sun, a vastly underrated newspaper, has been running a lot of stories in the last week or so about the huge crack cocaine problem in our town.
There are a number of big problems with crack, one of the biggest being that, since the drug trade is market driven [Adam Smith's invisible hand] the market sets the price and the price in this town is around two dollars a rock, the cheapest in North America. It is cheaper to get f'd up on crack in our capital than on beer.
Another huge problem, and the Ottawa Police Service's Chief Vern White has addressed it repeatedly, is that there are no where near enough services, read rehab centres, for crack heads who want to clean up their act. Facts are facts and I am sure that Chief White and his crew are not adverse to arresting dealers and users and sending them to jail but the facts that are facts show that policing or overpolicing doesn't solve the problem. At best it mitigates it. And it is not cost effective.
Think about that when the law and order nuts in power today try to bring in tough drug laws; those laws don't work, been tried, don't work. Unless you are invested in creating jobs as prison workers.
What we need are more and more and more resources poured into rehab, not just for crack addicted individuals but for drinkers and pot smokers and speed freaks and and and.
More cost effective for starters.
WFDS
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