It’s been a century or so since surgeon and Burnaby sanatorium owner Dr. Robert Telford was opining in the Vancouver Sun about the urgency of launching a facility in BC that provided treatment for “drug fiends.”
Debate had been heating up about these so-called drug fiends for a while. Fueled by racism toward Chinese labourers in the country, opium was the new enemy. Prohibition politics were in play, and an appetite for treatment was building.
Everyone in the province had an opinion on whether to manage illicit drug use as a criminal problem or a social concern. But the commonly held view was that drug users were moral degenerates from the “underclass” who needed saving from the evil, soulless criminals selling drugs.
The world has changed hundreds of times over since then ...
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