Displacement of Canada's Largest Public Illicit Drug Market in Response to a Police Crackdown.
Description:
Law enforcement is often used in an way to protect the public from social, community and health-related harm due to illicit drug use by injection drug users (IDUs). However there is little evidence to show that such enforcement has any impact on the perceived potential harms.
A large-scale police "crackdown" to control illicit drug use in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside provided the researchers of this article with an chance to evaluate the effectiveness of this approach. The study of 244 IDUs (mainly young men of an average age of 39 years, having injected drugs for an avearge of 13 years. It was conducted in Vancouver over 3 months before the police crackdown. A second study was done of 142 IDUs in the 3 months after the start of the crackdown, on Apr. 7, 2003, and a comparison between the two studies was done.
Type of Resource:
Journal
Publication Date:
2004
Volume:
170
Issue:
10
Pages:
1551-6
Location:
Vancouver