There's a term that's used for arresting people who use drugs in our neighbourhood and it's the low-hanging fruit. So there's a sense of shooting fish in a barrel. There's a contained number of people who are severely addicted who obviously possess drugs. With the gang violence that has occurred in Vancouver recently, and the headlines, and the constant calling for more policing, I question who's a gang member. At what point is someone so small a dealer that they're not considered a gang member? No one ever says who that is. That's what we see in our neighbourhood, a sort of pyramid scheme of drug dealing where many, many people who are addicted to drugs are paid solely in drugs to sell drugs that they don't own and that they don't get the profits of. They're simply like a clerk. They sell drugs; the money has to be given to someone else. These are people who are easily arrested. We see this currently. This is who gets arrested. These are the massive numbers of arrests.
I brought this along. I don't know if it's of any use. It's the Vancouver Drug Use Epidemiology. Jane Buxton has done a fabulous job of putting all of the heroin and cocaine busts.... We actually have one from 2005, one from 2007, and there's one coming again in 2009. What it does is it ties the arrests to the.... The other thing that's in here, obviously, is epidemiology, the number of HIV cases, hepatitis C. And there's a very intelligent overview. So should you ask yourself the kind of question you're asking, it's in there, along with the data from drug courts. She calls them expensive, ineffective, and continuing. They've decided, of course, that doesn't matter; we're going to do drug treatment courts.
So that's what I would encourage. I can leave these for people.