For three years, a small, ventilated washroom located in the Downtown Eastside (DTES) was a safe haven for crack cocaine users to smoke in, until it was shut down by health authorities. However, a new paper by SFU and UBC researchers is advocating for the benefits of such a safe space.

Ryan McNeil, an SFU postdoctoral researcher, and William Small, an SFU assistant professor of health sciences, conducted a study on safer smoking rooms (SSR) with the cooperation of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU).

Titled “We need somewhere to smoke crack,” the study explored how these rooms shape smoking practices, public crack smoking, and related harms. Their findings indicate that SSRs are sought after by crack cocaine users for many benefits.

“Our findings underscore how the [SSR] emerged in response to social violence experienced by people who smoke crack in the local drug scene, and minimized the potential for health and social harms by reshaping the environmental contexts of crack smoking,” said the authors of the study, who represented not only SFU but the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, UBC, and VANDU.

The latter, a social justice group comprised of almost 1,000 drug users and former users, works to improve the health of people who use illicit drugs through user-based peer support. They operated a small, unsanctioned washroom on the DTES, where crack cocaine users could smoke in private.

The study stresses the need to scale up intervention practices and emphasizes how integrating SSR into public health systems, along with social support, has the potential to improve the health and safety of crack-cocaine users.

In December 2013, Vancouver Coastal Health ordered VANDU to shut down the washroom because the organization was operating without an exemption from the Controlled Drug and Substances Act. This forced crack cocaine users to go without the benefits of the SSR.

The president of VANDU, Hugh Lampkin, said in a video for The Province that the SSR provided a safe haven for crack smokers. “It’s our creed, you know, saving lives. And we want to make sure people [. . .] feel safe,” he said.

The SSR allowed users to get off the street while using, offered health care services such as clean smoking devices, and protected them from potential violence and police harassment.

Lampkin explained that the alternative is that people will still use drugs, but in a public or unsafe place.

He continued, “If that person [smoking crack] happens to be a small female or small guy, the chances of the violence occurring goes up exponentially.”

Thomas Kerr, one of the study’s authors, echoed these thoughts in The Province’s video. “By providing an environment where people who use drugs can inhale crack, it’s good for drug users. It protects their health and it’s good for the broader community by bringing people out from public spaces into a healthy environment where we can address their health needs and simultaneously address community safety issues,” he stated.

Noted academic and journalist Chris Hedges spoke to a sold-out audience and numerous webcast viewers on Feb. 19 as part of SFU’s spring 2015 “President’s Dream Colloquium on Obedience and Disobedience.”

Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, known for covering wars and conflict in the Middle East as well as in the Balkans during his career as a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He has written numerous books on war, imperialism, religion, and society.

He sat down with The Peak before his lecture to touch on topics frequently discussed in his works.

The Peak: With reference to the idea of the “Rules of Revolt,” how should citizens, especially students, go about revolting against institutions? Does tying yourself to trees or bulldozers work anymore, or do people need to go higher up and try new things?

Hedges: Well, I mean this is the dilemma. [. . .] The bottom line is that those [problems] won’t stop unless you blow them up. But if you blow them up, you’ll spend the rest of your life in prison. And that is the dilemma, and you have it with the tar sands.

[Seeing] the corporate coup d’état which has taken in place in Canada as it has in the United States, they could care less what citizens want. They do what the corporate exploiters want.

And that creates a real problem for those of us who want to resist because appealing to the centres of power no longer works. Acts of mass civil disobedience [are] all we have left.

P: Regarding radical groups like ISIS, what should religious communities in places like Canada and the US, especially Muslim communities, do to counteract radicalization within their communities and bigotry from the outside?

H: Well it’s the bigotry that creates the radicalization.  [When] you render a people voiceless and when you dehumanize them — which has happened I think towards Muslims, certainly in the United States — then they are going to be driven in the arms of groups like that.

I saw that in the former Yugoslavia. People were driven in the arms of ethnic nationalists because of abuse by the dominant Serb majority, [or] the dominant Croat majority. If you can’t get justice within a particular system of power then you are inevitably going to be drawn to those groups that are fighting back against the dominant power. I think that is the danger of ISIS.

P: So to follow up on that, how should governments and institutions approach relations with Muslim communities, or do they even have an interest to stop radicalization?

H: ISIS is kind of a gift to the American war machine. [. . .] Extremism always plays off of extremism. And as western societies become more extremist, they need extremists who are really the mirror image of themselves.  And what happens is that the same middle or majority [. . .] is silenced, marginalized, and finally shut out of the debate.

And that’s where we’re headed.  So I’m very worried because when we suffer another catastrophic terrorist attack, the ideological, cultural, and social ground has already been set — [that] Muslims are inhuman, basically — for violence against Muslims. I’m very worried about it.

P: I think we’ve seen a lot of discussion around free speech lately. I’ve read that you’ve been disinvited to speak at the University of Pennsylvania. I’m wondering in your experience as a journalist how have you seen free speech undermined in various ways, by the media and institutions?

H: The parametres now of acceptable debate [are] so narrow. It is ridiculous. [. . .] I mean like, the debate over ISIS is should we just bomb ISIS, or should we bomb ISIS and send troops? That’s a debate.

[The media] lock people who offer a radical critique out, or at best they put on for three or four minutes and that is to make you speak in clichés. [. . .] So it’s effectively made actual debate impossible.  It’s a kind of ‘faux debate.’

And so that has become a very good mechanism for perpetuating corporate global imperial power, because it is never questioned by either side of the supposed two sides of a debate. [. . .] It’s kind of frightening what’s happened.

In a move that could leave the fish of the high seas breathing easier through their gills, one SFU instructor is advocating for international waters to be closed to fishing.

Isabelle Côté, a professor of marine ecology and conservation who was recently selected for the prestigious Leopold Leadership program at Stanford, has co-authored a new study in Journal of Scientific Reports.

“Intense fishing in the high seas has resulted in habitat destruction and declining stocks of fish such as tunas and swordfishes,” said Côté in her study.

The high seas are defined as those which do not belong to any country. Under international law, areas of the ocean that are within approximately 325 kilometres of any coastline — also called exclusive economic zones (EEZs) — are considered within the domain of that country, and they have economic rights over that land.

Outside of that area, however, the oceans fall under international jurisdiction. Thus, large swaths of the ocean are considered to belong to humanity as a whole.

According to Côté’s study, fishery practice around the world would be minimally affected by closing the high seas. It states that less than one per cent of fish caught globally are caught in areas outside of domestic control. “Under realistic assumptions, closing the high seas would result in no loss in fish catches or landed value of them on a global scale,” she wrote.

As part of the study, the authors also did an analysis of the economic impacts on individual countries. “People have been talking about this for a while,” she said in an interview with the Vancouver Sun. “What had been missing was an economic analysis. It’s fine to say, ‘Let’s close the high seas to fishing, there are likely to be some great ecological benefits to doing this.’ But at the end of the day, what’s going to happen economically to the countries no longer allowed to fish there?”

She notes that a few countries would be affected negatively, but most would actually gain, including Canada. “Once you allow the fish populations to recover, fish start spilling out of the no-take zones into the EEZs, and actually increase the catches there,” she explained.

“Given various assumptions, [Canada] would stand to gain in the ballpark of $100 million to $125 million.”

Côté hopes that the study will help spur national and international laws to protect the seas. “I hope our research increases understanding of the need for this,” she said. “I am delighted that the high seas are starting to be recognized as a valuable resource that deserves protection and stewardship.”