losing ground, gaining support

A discussion with Alan Campbell, Director of Mental Health and Addiction Services for the Vancouver Island Health Authority (VIHA). VIHA offers a range of services for addiction and their priority is providing appropriate accessible services for adults with serious mental illness and/or addictions. (Note: the views expressed here are of Alan Campbell’s, and do not reflect the views of the Vancouver Island Health Authority). 

As someone who works day-to-day addressing addiction and drug use, Alan is in a unique position to provide us with some insightful feedback on our social issue, drug policy, and our proposed solution. Addiction and drug use is a greater issue than treatment and prevention, it is about drug policy and how we deal with drugs overall; how we respond to this issue will affect addiction. Alan stated that this social issue is a ‘critical public policy issue’ an went further to say that ‘engaging the general public and providing clear information about addiction and substance abuse’ is vital. The hope is that this would ultimately result in a greater support for alternative and more effective approaches to dealing with the issue.

In our society at this time, we are facing an increase in drug use and there are views that we are ‘losing ground’ on drug availability, use, and addiction. Campbell stated his belief that the illegal drug industry has evolved more rapidly, with greater funding than the public policies that we have put in place to combat it. There is a sense of exasperation among people who work in the addiction community that they cannot alone tackle the problem and this creates a welcoming of alternative ideas from outside the community. 

The combination of feelings and evidence this presents a opportune time to step back from the issue, examine what is not working and look at what we can be doing differently to address this social issue. An open dialogue event such as the one we are proposing we hope would do just that. Addiction and drug use affects all areas of society and unfortunately, according to Campbell, not all groups affected are included in policy making. A discussion and generation of policy alternatives would have to include and represent everyone.

Campbell said the key issue that must be addressed is that most people do not understand what addiction is and what it is not- this is important to understand as it might allow people to address policy in a more effective way. In particular, I would argue this applies to policy makers at higher levels. They are often not exposed to the day-to-day consequences of addiction and drug use that communities are, however, policy makers often fall short of including these types of groups when designing policy. An event such as ours would need to present facts and evidence describing why exactly addiction is a problem and what impact it has on the various areas of society- a goal we would hope to achieve with our diverse panel of speakers.

Speaking about business students in particular, Campbell offered some reassurance that we do have something to contribute to the policy discussion and extended this to other groups outside the realm of addiction. Though we are fairly uninvolved and outside the addiction community, this may be an asset as we can see the issue from a different angle than someone surrounded by it. When you are do deeply involved in an issue, particularly addiction, you tend to become very passionate and your emotions can weigh in on the decision making process. Discussing addiction as outsiders and from more of an economical viewpoint as business student may provide some interesting ideas on alternatives; particularly in Vancouver where drug addiction is a visible issue. Campbell also went on to stress the importance of the commerce side of society to be informed and involved in social issues as it ultimately affects them as well.