Sitemap

I’m certain that viewers watching the NBC broadcast of the Olympics this month will not be seeing Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, a skid row neighborhood where author Gabor Mate cares for hard core drug addicts and works with a team of other professionals who are trying to reduce the harm that addiction causes. Mate describes a gritty world where women sell their bodies for a hit of cocaine and men turn to lives of thievery or worse to maintain a heroin or coke habit. In the midst of this, an institution called the Portland Hotel meets addicts where they are, offering a clean room, decent food and medical care. Addicts are encouraged to get clean and sober, but not required to do so prior to getting services. This technique is called “harm reduction” and Mate sees it as a far more effective form of intervention than the law enforcement model that dominates society’s current approach to the problem.