Reading the local newspaper, listening to your local Addiction Medicine Specialist, or the incessant bleating from Vancouver talk radio hosts that "we just need more addiction treatment programs!"
Well just how effective are community drug treatment programs?
The future for Metro Vancouver looks like what the United Kingdom (UK) has been doing since 1998. The Labour Government of the UK has doubled the number of "Harm Reduction" facilities 1, implemented drug courts and has increasingly referred offender-addicts for treatment.
"At a drop-in centre in Hounslow, an unglamorous suburb in West London, clients (as addicts are respectively known) are relaxing with candle-lit acupuncture. Downstairs they can pick up syringes (in different colours, to avoid accidental sharing) and other paraphernalia to smoke or shoot up more safely. A centre over the road prescribes and dispenses methadone, an oral substitution for addicts." 2
"Yet there are hints that such thinking is falling out of favour. After it emerged that as few as 3% of those in treatment actually shake their habit ..." 3
Unlike, The City of Vancouver, or the government of British Columbia, the UK has a comprehensive National Drug Treatment Monitoring System (NDTMS). The NDTMS measures the number, types and successes with drug treatment services throughout the UK.
NIABY reviewed the report: "Drug Treatment in the North West of England" 2006/2007 4. Most of the report 36 page report deals with process but buried on page 33 is Figure 15 below: Discharged Reason by Area of Residence, 2006/2007.
Results - Only Around 10% Were Drug Free at Treatment Completion.
There were 37,396 individuals in contact with structured drug treatment services in the North West of England. Now take a look at the black bars in the graph. The black bar shows the number of clients who were clean at the completion of a treatment program. Only around 10% of the addicts managed to be drug free at the time of treatment completion. There is no follow up to see how long they remained drug free.
In 2005 and 2006 British Columbia had 21,538 accessing publicly funded alcohol and drug treatment services 5. Community treatment programs work about 10% of the time getting addicts clean and sober. Your Mayor and Council should know the how dismal the results are from drug treatments programs. Almost all drug addicts in treatment will relapse and when the addiction treatment industry brings to your city a proposal to build large "therapeutic" treatment communities (greater than 10 clients) in urban residential neighbourhoods keep in mind that over 90% will relapse and use drugs and/or alcohol again while in treatment. The burden will be on the local host neighbourhood to put up with the consequences of these treatment failures.
The addiction treatment industry in British Columbia is advertising itself as "the solution". Results from other countries where it was thought that the simple answer was "more treatment" show that it is not simple. The BC government and Vancouver Coastal Health 6 do not monitor or publish treatment results from our addiction treatment industry.
NIABY sees no reason why the results would be any better than the dismal results from NDTMS in NW England or anywhere else.