On this Overdose awareness week, KPIX is looking at the opioid crisis though the shared experiences of San Francisco and Vancouver, another city hit particularly hard over the past 10 years. While they may be two cities with differing approaches, there is a very similar debate in each city over what the approach to the emergency should look like. "It's too easy, here, to become trapped here," explained Jeffrey Brocklesby, a drug user in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
"Once you get into this five block by two block radius, you have everything you need to maintain an addiction, without having to do much." Whether it's the streets and alleys of Vancouver, or those in San Francisco's Tenderloin, one obstacle to pulling away from the opioid crisis is that drugs are everywhere. Brocklesby said he has tried the treatment program offered at the downtown safe-use site.
"That hasn't worked for me," he said. "Maybe I wasn't ready, or maybe the environment down in the middle of the hood was too much of an overload for me." And that is one reasons help often comes from outside of town.
"So this is a place that your mom and kids can come and visit and feel safe and comfortable," said Giuseppe Ganci of the Last Door Recovery Society. "It's also helped this community. Our neighbors love us.
We take care of the lawns." About 30 minutes from downtown, you will find Ganci's group and a list of other organizations based in New Westminster, now known as Canada's recovery capital. "We've become th.