Through a Blue Lens: Vancouver Police & Their Relationship With Addicts

Introduction

This 1999 documentary presented by The National Film Board of Canada follows a group of Vancouver police officers who work in the Downtown Eastside and their unique relationship with the drug addicts living on the streets. The officers themselves document the lives of several addicts who have agreed to participate in this initiative to show the realities of drug use to youth.

Quotes

“The Odd Squad Society is a group of 7 Vancouver police officers. We’ve all had time on The Beat and we’re all motivated by seeing young people down in this area, who had absolutely no idea of exactly where they were going with their drug experimentation and drug use. Our goal is to provide young people with real-life images and information about the effects of hard-core drugs, allowing them to make their own choices about drug use.“

“The drugs that I do, I don’t do them because I like to do them, I do it because I’m in pain and it numbs the pain. It’s a death wish – when you take drugs, all that’s going to end up [happening is] either you’re going to go to jail or you’re going to die. Young girls, they end up on the corners to buy their dope and the dope ends up supporting the drug dealer on the corner, the male drug dealer. Or they end up with a pimp, they end up with AIDS, which is all death wishes you know.”

“There really isn’t any happiness down here. This is misery. This is slavery. I’m a slave to a drug.”

“Working on this drug awareness project, you sort of become attached to the various subjects that we’ve chosen to chronicle down here … you have to get to know their life in detail and you realize that they’re doing a wonderful service to the community by providing us access to their life and filming their hellish existence down here and talking about their sad and painful stories down here. And they have nothing to give monetarily back to the community, but this is one way that they feel they can make a difference.”