By DEVEN FARON
CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Nowadays, a quarter cannot really get you anywhere.  A less popular song on iTunes will put you out four quarters, and a popular song will put you out close to six.  But in Vancouver, Canada, a quarter can actually get you somewhere— that is, if you’re a crack addict looking for a clean pipe.

A non-profit organization in Vancouver, Canada called the Portland Hotel Society’s Drug Users Resource Center (DURC), has installed two vending machines in the Downtown Eastside, vending machines that sell “safe” crack pipes for the low price of 25 cents apiece.  In an interview with CTV News, Vancouver, Canada Kailin See, director of the DURC, explained that the vending machines are “about increasing access to safer inhalation supplies in the Downtown Eastside.”

As is to be expected, the Canadian government is having a hard time backing the DURC’s goal of “healthy drug use,” especially because it interferes directly with its actions to eradicate drug use in the area.  As the Canadian Minister of Public Safety Steven Blaney said in a statement to The Independent, “we disagree with promoters of this initiative.  Drug use damages the health of individuals and the safety of our communities.  This government supports treatment that ends drug use, including limiting access to drug paraphernalia by young people.”

I stand firmly on the side of the Canadian government.  Ridiculous is the only word that comes to mind upon hearing about the DURC’s newest enterprise.  If anything, making crack pipes more accessible is detrimental to the fight against drug use, as when you decrease the risk in something, you also increase its appeal.

The risk found in crack pipes is that they are usually extremely hard to come by, which leads to sharing and/or overuse.  The sharing and/or overuse of crack pipes is where the problems start to appear, according to the DURC, as broken and shared pipes can lead to the flu, the common cold or, in the most extreme of cases, HIV.

So, instead of trying to stop the use of crack cocaine altogether, the DURC has decided to make it even easier to smoke crack — and a lot more affordable, too.

According to Clyde Wright, a resident of the neighborhood where DURC installed the vending machines, “if a user has to choose between buying a rock [of crack] for $10 or buying a pipe, he is going to buy the rock.”

This popular mentality is what led the DURC to establish its unique vending machines.  Now an addict will never have to put himself or herself between a rock and a hard place, and can have the best of both worlds.  A clean pipe and a crack rock? It sounds as if Downtown Eastside is every addict’s little slice of heaven.

While studies do show that providing clean pipes ultimately leads to lower crime rates and helps people avoid mouth sores, people are still doing an extremely harmful drug, albeit in a nicer environment.

Crack, no matter if it is smoked out of a disgusting, dirty, old pipe from your friend or the person down the block, or from a new, clean pipe from your local vending machine, is bad for you.  Side effects of crack range from tooth decay to organ failure, and addiction is kicked into high gear even after just one dose, according to drugfreeworld.org.

The risk of the flu or mouth sores seems laughable when added onto the larger list of much more serious side effects.

The DURC’s decision to make the use of crack easier and cleaner is in actuality an admittance of defeat.  If they were really devoted to helping the people of Downtown Eastside, they would take the resources used on their polka-dotted crack pipe vending machines and put them toward fighting drug use altogether.  So, DURC, put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Diven Faron, FCRH ’16, is an English major from Water Mill, N.Y.