Vancouver Area Network of Drugs Users (VANDU)- Your Tax Dollars At Work!

Blocking traffic on the Cambie St Bridge today…

There’s a march going on right now in Vancouver. Just a few minutes ago VANDU was blocking traffic on the Cambie Street Bridge, carrying a banner saying ‘Homes Not Jails’…

Now, there’s nothing wrong with people demonstrating- but why is it necessary for them to block traffic? The Cambie street bridge is an important artery into the city, blocking it will cause a lot of hassle to many people. Besides the question of legality, this is not a good way for them to get the backing of the public.

Perhaps they don’t care, because they already have a lot of backing from the public! What support is that you say? Well, last year, Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) paid them a whopping $250,437 for their services handing-out materials for ‘Harm Reduction’ programs.

So, it can be said, VCH is a major sponsor behind today’s traffic blocking incident…

Why would VCH contract these people to hand-out drug taking supplies when they are a very short walk down the road from the INSITE clinic? (another major consumer of VCH funding) Not only does it seem wasteful to have parallel services so close to each other (not even Starbucks does this!) but is it not questionable to be giving such large sums of money to an organization of self-confessed drug addicts!

Also, the word is on-the-street that VANDU members get paid cash to go to protest events. I’ve been told that myself by one of their members- on average, he said, they get $20-$25 honorariums for appearing at demonstrations and city meetings. Is this where all of that money from VCH goes? One has to wonder…

And now, it seems, they are trying to branch-out to Abbotsford! I wonder how many 10’s of thousands of dollars they will be asking Fraser Health for? One also has to wonder how many treatment beds this money can be used for.

I’ll be writing more about VANDU in the near future. They’ve been on my list for a while now. If there is any organization that is most helping to keep the status quo in Vacouver’s Downtown East Side, this group is leading the pack.

And that, my friends, is an act of murder…

 

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