I’ve been hearing a lot of talk from fellow Calgarians about having more cops in the downtown core to stop the growing drug problem. Having more police downtown will not be enough to solve this problem, actually it won’t even address it if other things are not done. It will just move the problem to another neighborhood, as seen previously in Vancouver. The homeless will still have no home and dug addicts will still be addicted and using.

What we need to do is go after the root of the problem and stop only fighting the side effects. We need to go after poverty! This can be accomplished by such things as making education more affordable, housing more affordable and implementing a living wage. Not only will these implementations prevent these problems in the future, it will also help the people presently on the street get off the street and eventually we will be able to eliminate the problem of homelessness.

There is a notion going around that I’m hearing quite a lot lately. That is, “Most people on street, choose to be on the street.” Yet when someone says this to me and I ask them to give me an example of one of these people, they can not. They later confide in me that they heard this from someone else but have absolutely nothing to back it up. Let’s stop spreading these lies and get out the facts. Stating the previously mentioned notion is just a way of not addressing the problem and taking away the guilt associated with it. But there is a better way to take the guilt away. You can take away the guilt by addressing the problem!

It may be hard work, but we will be living in a much world if we do the right thing.