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Sensible solution
for alcoholism

The problem of alcohol is more
acute and more visible in the
Downtown Eastside (skid road)
area of Vancouver than in other
areas. The dollar cost to the city
and the province is enormous and
the human cost tragic. While it can-
not be solved for all time, it can be
brought under control if certain re-
medial actions are taken by city
council and the provincial govern-
ment.

These are some of the conclu-
sions of a brief on ‘‘Alcoholism In

Sy
g

The Downtown Eastside,’’ prepar-
ed for the Downtown Community
Health Society by Jean Swanson,
Libby Davies and Jim McQueen.

The brief points out that alco-
holism in the Downtown Eastside
is compounded by a number of fac-
tors indigenous to the area.

These include low income poor
housing with many residents living
in small, dingy and depressing
rooms; the failure of landlords to
mnaintain standards of cleanliness;
the high number of liquor outlets
(82 percent of the licensed public
house capacity of the entire city is
located in this core area); the large
number of bootleggers; and filthy
pubs that breed disease.

Police estimate that theyt spend
half a million dollars a year picking
up drunks in this area. Itis estimat-
ed that dealing with 350 chronic al-
coholics here costs about $720,000
in wages for social service workers.
Emergency accommodation costs,
professional psychiatric services
and medical costs are all in addition
to the above.

What is the solution?

The authors of the brief, based
on years of personal experience in
dealing with and helping people in
the Downtown Eastside, make
these (among other) recommend-
ations:

@ Better housing is desperately
needed; :

@ Incomes must be raised
above the poverty line; 3

@ Build a new compulsory
detox centre in the area;

@ Amoratorium on the issuing
of new liquor licenses;

@ Beer parlor owners and op-
erators who violate the law should
be charged and fined to the maxi-
mum extent of the law;

@ Pass laws enabling police to
confiscate Lysol, vanilla, rubbing
alcohol, etc., when they are sold as
beverages;

@ Allow police to confiscate li-
quor being held for sale by boot-
leggers;

@ Health regulations in beer
parlors should be strictly enforced.

The brief points out that the pro-
vincial government has taken ac-
tions which tend to increase the
consumption of alcohol. These in-
clude increasing the number of li-
quor outlets in the province, en-
couraging the use of wine ‘‘as a
beverage of moderation,’’ suspen-
sion of its alcohol education pro-
gram, and permitting drinking at
public events.

The government doesn’t ap-
proach this issue with clean hands
because it derives an enormous rev-
enue from its monopoly of the sale
of liquor.

The brief proposes profits from
liquor sales by the government
should not be used as a source of
general revenue but devoted to
meeting the costs of alcoholism in
the province, also that liquor ad-
vertising should be banned.

The brief also makes the follow-
ing very sensible proposal regard-
ing government policy:

‘Every government decision af-
fecting alcohol should be subject to
the following question: Will this
decision make it easier for citizens
to drink alcohol? If the answer is
yes, then no action should be taken
on that proposal.

The Downtowr Eastside Resi-
dents Association (DERA) is to be
recommended for its unrelenting
pressure on city council for remed-
ial action, and the authors of this
brief are likewise to be commended
for their sensible proposals.

The election of DERA leaders
like Bruce Eriksen and Jean Swan-
son to city council and Libby Dav-
ies to the parks board would be a
big step forward in the campaign to
clean up the Downtown Eastside.

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VLC gives warm send-

off to COPE campaign |

The Committee of. Progressive
Elector’s Vancouver civic cam-
paign received a warm sendoff this
week from the Vancouver Labor
Council as most of COPE’s 26 can-
didates were on hand for Tuesday’s

_ regular VLC meeting.

VLC delegates heard COPE
president Bruce Yorke introduce
the COPE candidates the COPE
alderman Harry Rankin stress
labor’s interest in a. COPE--
Harcourt victory in November.

“Tt’s damned important that we
turn out the vote,’ Rankin told
delegates. ‘‘But it’s no bloody use
going up and down the ballot pick-
ing one name here and another
name there. You want to vote for
those who havea program in thein-
terests of working people.”’

Rankin urged delegates to en-
sure that the labor council’s slate
of COPE and Mike Harcourt for
mayor was well understood by
union members. © ;

‘This is the unity slate with the
program for working people,’’ he
said.

The election of a progressive city

council would mean a lot for work-
ing people in Vancouver, he added,
citing a rapid transit system and a
housing program as two benefits.

The VLC previously committed
itself to a significantly larger role in
this year’s election than it has
played in previous years and it has
agreed to spend up to $10,000 in a
parallel campaign to support Har-
court and COPE.

The VLC will be meeting with
the COPE leadership to specify
what the labor council will do. One
proposal under active considera-
tion is the publication of a poll card
to be distributed to most homes in
the city.

Both COPE and the Harcourt
campaigns will be focusing on East
End Vancouver in an effort to in-
crease voter turnout. With 36,000
additional voters registered this
year, the new voters are seen as the
key to breakthroughs. 5

COPE needs 150 people to vol-
unteer for its ambitious door-to-
door canvas in 30 key polls. Volun-
teers are asked to phone the COPE.
campaign headquarters at
253-6381.

/ t was 10 years ago this year that a few hundred people from across
Canada re-established the Young Communist League after several

years without a Communist youth organization. Since then thousands
of young people have made contact with the YCL and passed through
its ranks.

The anniversary of the League was the occasion last Saturday for a
banquet to mark these past 10 years, honor some of those who played
significant roles in the League during that period, and to welcome to
B.C., the acting national leader of the YCL, Sylvie Baillargeon.

Sylvie, 24, currently national organizer for the YCL, is taking over
the leadership from Mike Gidora, who stepped down from his post as
general secretary in September. Mikeis back in B.C. and working in the
Kamloops area.

The YCL’s B.C. provincial secretary George Gidora presented four
of his predecessors with honorary life memberships in the League.
Honored were Paul Bjarnason, Sean Griffin, Fred V.'ilson and Marty
Smith.

* * *

A lso visiting B.C. this week is Communist Party central labor secre-
tary Bill Stewart. On the last leg of a cross-country tour which he
embarked on more than a month ago, Bill led seminars for trade union-
ists in Vernon and Port Alberni and will be leading a Lower Mainland
seminar this weekend. :

* oo *-

a

[ is with shock and sorrow that we report the passing of one of this
paper’s longest standing readers and supporters, and a friend and
acquaintance to many hundreds in the progressive movement.

On Wednesday, Oct. 1, Anker Gilstead failed to recover from open
heart surgery.

A memorial service has been set for this Saturday, Oct. 11 at 2 p.m.
in the Fishermen’s Hall, 138 E. Cordova, Vancouver.

PEOPLE AND ISSUES

Long associated with the fishing industry and the labour movement
in this province, Anker was born in Sandefjord, Norway in 1912, and
as a child emigrated to Canada with his pioneer family who settled in
Whonnock in the Fraser Valley in 1924.

By the time he was 15, he was already fishing in the Skeena River, a
career he pursued until his retirement in 1962. During World War II,
Arker served, as did many fishermen, in the ‘‘gumboot navy,” the —
naval reserve which performed coast guard service. After the war he
worked on a packer and in 1950 he built his own packer, the Susan D.

He was a member of the Fraser River Gillnetters Association
which merged with other fishing unions to form the United Fishermen
and Allied Workers Union in 1945. A member of the Albion Local of
the UFAWU he served on the union’s Fraser River District Council
and in 1962 when he left active fisning he became janitor at the
Fishermen’s Hall where he served until 1978.

Since 1978 he was a member of the board of directors and a
volunteer worker at the People’s Co-Op Bookstore. He was a member
of the Communist Party’s Burnaby Club at the time of his death. .

He is survived by his wife Francis, a daughter Susan Dowell, a son
Eric, and four grandchildren.

* * * * *
small error in our front page story last week on the Public Service
Alliance of Canada’s strike was an important enough point to de-
serve this correction. We stated that the clerks have been without a con-
tract since November, 1979. That would have been bad enough, but in
fact the clerks have been without a contract since November, 1978.
After nearly two years of frustration in their attempts to get a decent
contract from the federal treasury board, the militancy shown by the

The right-wing Burnaby Vot-
ers Association majority on
Burnaby municipal council has
resumed its attack on home-
owners and tenants renting out
or living in basement suites.

Burnaby council last year was
pressured and embarrased into
halting a door-to-door search
for ‘‘illegal suites’’ followed by
prosecution of offenders.

Burnaby Citizens Associa-
tion alderman Fred Randall,
chairman of the municipality’s
housing committee, led the fight
against the crackdown on base-
ment suites claiming that the
policy victimized both tenants,
who are unable to find afford-
able accommodation in the
present housing crisis, and
homeowners, who need the ex-
tra revenue to make mortgage
payments at current high inter-
est rates. :

Under pressure from the
BCA Burnaby. stopped .the
search and voted not to enforce
bylaws unless complaints were
received.

However three prosecutions
were already in process and
Sept. 29 the BVA majority vot-
ed to proceed with the prosecu-
tions, even though no com-
plaints have ever been received.

The in-camera vote enraged

‘Randall who threatened to quit
as housing committee chair-
man.

Theissue has also led toa pa-
ting of ways between the BCA
and alderman Gerry Ast. Ast
‘voted with the BVA to prose-
cute, the latest in a series of vio- }
lations. of BCA policy. When
confronted by the BCA execu-
tive on the issue, Ast tendered
his resignation in the organiza-
tion.

‘‘We have been calling for a
moratorium on all cases before
the courts,’’ BCA president Joe
Gunn said this week. ‘‘It’s not
fair to enforce these bylaws dur-
ing the housing crisis.”’

The BCA executive accepted
Ast’s resignation without ques-
tion.

~ PACIFIC TRIBUNE—OGT. 10, 1980—Page 2

clerks on the picket line is understandable.

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