The City of Vancouver, Vancouver Coastal Health, and the Vancouver Police Department currently approach drug policy following Vancouver’s Four Pillars Drug Strategy defined as ’a coordinated, comprehensive approach that balances public order and public health in order to create a safer, healthier community’.
This not only includes policy makers and drug enforcement agencies, but the Four Pillars Coalition; a consortium including government, businesses, non-profit organizations, and advocacy groups to engage and collaborate in addressing the drug problem and related crime in this city. No one group is responsible for the strategy’s implementation as it is a cooperative strategy and each partner applies their efforts within their areas of responsibility.
PREVENTION: refers to strategies that aim to prevent the use of all addictive substances, including alcohol and tobacco as well as illegal and prescription drugs. This pillar of the strategy aims to achieve specific goals including reducing harm from substance abuse for all areas of the community, delaying first substance use, reduced rate of new cases and number of current cases of substance dependence, and improved health, safety, and order. To achieve these programs including public education, training and jobs, transition housing, accessible health care, and prevention efforts tailored specifically to Vancouver’s youth.
TREATMENT: includes interventions and support programs that target individuals with addiction problems to make healthier choices in their lives. The overall goal is to improve health by decreasing preventable deaths, disease, and injuries, and improving social integration. Also focuses on tailored treatment to individual needs as well as treatment targeting specific populations.
ENFORCEMENT: The VPD plays the greatest role in this particular pillar of the strategy, although, the organization has openly endorsed the Four Pillars Strategy overall. This pillar focuses on the need for peace, order, and safety. The VPD’s drug policy outlines a mission to reduce crime, fear of crime, and street disorder while protecting the vulnerable and preserving and protecting life.
HARM REDUCTION: The overall goal of the Four Pillars Strategy is harm reduction, which centers on the need to minimize harm to those suffering from substance addiction and focuses on the harm caused by problematic substance use, rather than substance use specifically. This is done by setting a strata of achievable goals that when met create incremental gains that lead to a healthier life for users and a healthier community overall. Vancouver’s harm reduction programs include the supervised injection site (SIS), needle exchanges and low-threshold community health services.
With the cooperative implementation of the Four Pillars Drug Strategy and the collaboration of the partners involved, the City of Vancouver, VPD, and Coastal Health all support and encourage a harm reduction model of approaching substance abuse. The strategy itself does include elements not directly associated with harm reduction, such as drug enforcement, which do garner resources. However, the focus is not on this pillar. Resources and focus are placed in the other three pillars as well as an open attitude towards experimental treatment, innovative approaches, and harm reduction initiatives.
This is evident in the way the strategy engages all areas of the community including substance users and focuses on the harms to the community as a whole. The harm reduction model is visible through programs such as the safe injection site (Insite) openly supported by all involved in this strategy and other community groups, needle exchange programs, and participation in novel approaches to addiction treatment including the North American Opiate Medication Initiative (NAOMI).
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