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Those who profit from alcohol
Should pay bill for treatment

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

The Provincial NDP govern-
ment has tackled the problem of
alcoholism after a fashion. Last
spring the legislature passed the
Alcohol and Drug Commission
Act. The cabinet appointed a
seven member Alcohol and Drug
Commission, the duties of which
(according to its own definition),
are “operating, encouraging and
Supporting programs for
people’’. Specifically it ad-
ministers a fund for education
respecting the problems
resulting from the use of drugs,
alcohol, or cigarettes, rehabilita-
tion from the effects and results
from their use, and prevention of
their use.

Six months and $193,203 later,
the Commission has come up
with its first report. It contains
nothing startling, which isn’t sur-
prising because there are no pat
solutions. It decided to deal with
alcoholism as its first priority;

Record crowd marks Int. Women’s Day

A record crowd of more than
300 filled the Russian People’s
Home last Sunday to com-
memorate International
Women’s Day first proclaimed
in 1910 by the Second: Inter-
national. ;

Peggy Chunn, in her welcome
address, outlined the history of
women’s struggles ‘since the
time, more than 60 years ago,
when Clara Zetkin had first
proposed that March 8 be set
aside as International Women’s
Day, and pointed out that social
change has been brought about
by the united struggle of men and
women together.

Social worker and B.C.
delegate to the World Congress
of Peace Forces in Moscow last
October, Bridget Moran focussed
on “Peace Prices and Poverty”’
in her address. She told the
overflow meeting of the wide
participation at the World

Congress, the many countless
ideologies represented and the
overwhelming desire of those
attending to strengthen detente
and the world movement for
peace.

“Some call the position of the
Soviet Union a peace con-

~ spiracy,”’ she noted. “‘Let’s hope

this conspiracy grows and grows,
reaching out to all countries of
the world. It would be wonderful
to attend a future world peace
congress. in Ottawa or
Washington.

Commenting on life in the
Soviet Union whichshe witnessed
during her time spent at the
Moscow Congress, Mrs. Moran
pointed out that housing units are
being built on a scale that is vir-
tually unimagineable in this
country, consumer goods are in
abundance and all available at
uniform, stabl i

She contrasted the situation
there with the fact that in this
country, more than two million
children grow up in poverty, the
cost of. housing and food _in
skyrocking and, in many cases,
rents account for more than half
of many family incomes.

The Surrey youth choir as well
as Ukrainian and Russian
dancers provided the entertain-
ment for an-enthusiastic
audience.

Several resolutions were

adopted by the meeting on

peace, child care and a special

-Tesolution introduced by Ethel

Ostry, president of the Coor-
dinating Committee to Roll Back
Prices. The resolution called for
action by both federal and
provincial governments to roll
back prices, curb profiteering
and safequard the living stan-
dards of Canadians.

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here are some of its observations
and conclusions.

e Alcohol is a drug.

e In the treatment of drug
dependent persons, a figure of

10% is usually considered a’

reasonable rate of success.

¢ No solution to drug use will
be found: in isolation from all
other social and health
developments in the province.

e Drug dependency problems
can only be handled where they
originate ‘‘in the home, in the
heart’’. People must, “‘begin to
take responsibility of their own
actions.”’ It is completely absurd
to, ‘‘let the government do it.”
Drug users have no right to
blame the drug when it is their
own, ‘‘decision making’’, that is
really to blame. (In other words,
drug use and abuse is not related
in any way to the society in
which we live, or to the efforts of
the drug, (alcohol, narcotics,
cigarettes), manufacturers,
advertisers or pushers. The vic-
tim is to blame for his or her own
misfortune. )

The solution, according to-the
Commission, lies in the es-
tablishment of Community
Resource Centres, improvement

PT announcement

Starting with next week’s edi-
tion, the PT will carry an ad-
ditional page of B.C. news every
week until the summmer. We
find it necessary to add a fifth
B.C. page because of the big
struggles taking place on many
fronts which make it impossible
to satisfactorily cover the events
in our present four B.C. pages.

The additional page will add
substantially to our costs, par-
ticularly since we also have to
cope with a sharp boost in our
print bill. However, we are hop-
ing that with a successful spring
fund drive, which starts on April
1, that our readers will rally to
our support and make it possible
to continue with the additional
feature.

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and standardization of treatment —

and training opportunities, anda

different type of public educa-
tion.

I have had quite a bit of ex-
perience with alcoholism both as

a lawyer, (for 22 years in Van- |

couver’s so-called skid road
area), and also as an alderman, I
have never taken the position
that the victims alone are to
blame for the state they are in.
But a great deal of influence and
pressure is exerted by society
that the individual can not cope
with.

Nor can I buy the Com-
mission’s philosophy that the
government is not responsible.
This government takes in close
to $100 million a year in liquor

taxes and as far as I’m concerm;
ed it has a moral responsibility :

to spend a good portion of this to
try and halt the increasing use of

“drugs and to care of the victims.

Furthermore, I believe that
those who profit from the in-

creasing use of drugs, (and here

I am referring to the liquor dis-
tilleries and, the cigarette
manufacturers), should be com-

pelled by law to pay a large

share of the cost of taking care of

their victims, and this should be

a charge against profits.

It would be better yet if the
government were to take over
thesé two industries, cut out all
advertising, and use all profits to
pay for educational programs —
and for health costs incurred i

providing services to victims.

For chronic alcoholics we need —
a whole network of Detox Cen-
tres where they can be “dried

out”. Sending a drunk to jail

cures nothing, and anyway, it 1S
only the poor people that land uP
in jail, for drinking.

If the Commission were t0

spend more of its time in the |
schools, in the places where peo

ple work, in the court rooms, all

_with trade unions who have tO —

cope with this problem every
day, it would learn a lot more
and a lot faster.

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PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, MARCH 15, 1974—PAGE2

McEWEN

F or British Columbians in particular, the
103rd Anniversary of the Paris Commune of
1871 holds a very special significance. It was the year
that British Columbia joined Confederation, but not
without a long and bitter struggle against a conspiracy
of U.S. annexationists who sought to annex the whole of
B.C. to US. territory.

Like the Parisian workers whose revolutionary in-
itiative against fearful odds created the Commune, B.C.
labor with the Cariboo miners stood in the vanguard of

the struggle against the U.S. territorial land-grabbers, -

thereby winning B.C. for Confederation, of such
Struggles is the real fabric of history woven, and the
grandeur of its victories and defeats a heritage from the
past for guidance to the future.

Karl Marx and later Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, each in
their time, gave a very special emphasis to the lessons
of the Commune, the forces which valiantly stood by it,
and those who opposed it and ultimately drowned it in
its own blood. If workers of today require any lessons on
the originators of class violence they need only turn to
the written record of the French bourgeoisie in its li-
quidation of the Paris Commune.

With the proclamation of the Paris Commune
March 28, 1871, the Parisian proletariat in whose hands
its direction lay, and who had been left with nothing but
sheer ruin by a bankrupt feudal - monarchial - militarist
bourgeoisie, who had fled to Versailles (Thiers’
regime).at the birth of the Commune; passed many fun-

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out by the Commune).

Many decrees which should have been passed were
overlooked or neglected or both, due largely to the
ideological divisions and leadership within the Com-
mune itself. The divisions between the Proudhonists
and the Blanqui factions; the fatal ideology that the

- working class could take over a bourgeois state ap-

paratus intact without first smashing it was destined to
become a fatal omission for the Commune. And, as
Marx observes in his Civil War in France, ‘‘The hardest
thing to understand is certainly the holy awe with which
Commune authority remained standing respectfully
outside the gates of the Bank of France. This was also a
serious political mistake. The Bank in the hands of the
Commune —.this would have been worth more than ten
thousand hostages... .” In that day, as in this, the
financial institutions of capitalism were and are the
nerve-centres of monopoly exploitation. Only the Inter-
national Working Men’s Association, then a minority
segment of the Paris Commune, sought a take over in
place of respectability, but the Blanquis and Prudhonite
socialists were opposed — a fatal mistake! _

With the Prussian army at the northern gates of
Paris and the Thiers regime at Versailles daily es-
calating its mass murder of the Commune and its sup-
porters, the final massacre of the Commune at the

“‘Wall of the Federals’’ beside the historic cemetary of °

Pere Lachaise was a foregone conclusion. Even. as

But we still say ‘Viva la Commune!”
SSS SSNS

Marx points out, the Prussian army was more humane
than the French bourgeoisie to Commune followers a?
refugees, men, women and children. For Thiers the ol

breachloading weapons would not kill fast enough S° §

they brought in. cannon and ‘‘mitrailleuse’’, the

' forerunner of the modern machinegun to mow the Com —

mune down like grass.

Lenin described the Commune and its salutory
lesson as a dress rehearsal for the great Russiall
Revolution of 1917, a rehearsal that would see the prou®
flag of the Communards of 1871 flying side-by side with :
the Red Flag of the young Soviet Republic. The Intel
national Workingmen’s Association had designated thé
flag of the Paris Commune as the flag of the world

Republic while 57 years later in is exhaustive studies % — :

the Commune Lenin was to write ‘‘the successes of the ;
October Revolution rest on the shoulders of the Paris
Commune.”’ ae

And the first premier of the new province of British
Columbia, Amor de Cosmos, editorialized in Me
newspaper, the Victoria Standard, that ‘the day Wi!
come when the principles of the ill-fated rebellion °
Paris will be extolled to the skies.”

Years ago, the Socialist Party of Canada, and late!
the Communist Party used to mark the anniversary °
the Paris Commune with mass meetings and lectures:
Such rallies aided a young generation of socialists to
derstand the class view of history. There is no reason
that the observance of such historic anniversaries”
would not assist a young generation of today over thé
ideological rough spots of social change, more pressing
today than in our yesterdays. : f-

Perhaps, unlike Marx Engels and Lenin, we can 4
ford to forget the Commune and consequently forget its
fundamental lessons on the evolution of revolutiona
Socialism ‘and the new human society ‘we’ all hope fof

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