Calgary columnist blames Vancouver’s Eastside for Cory Monteith’s death
Posted Jul 19, 2013 4:12 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – A Calgary columnist is causing quite the controversy in our city.
Licia Corbella’s editorial in the Calgary Herald seems to blame Cory Monteith’s death on the Downtown Eastside and Insite.
“Everybody knows where you can get heroin in Vancouver. You don’t have to be a user or even do drugs, everyone knows you just head to the Downtown Eastside and it’s pretty easy to get. That’s not the case in most other cities,” says Corbella.
In her editorial, Corbella suggests if Monteith had been visiting any other city in Canada, the likelihood of his death would have been much lower. “I don’t think you can tell me of a neighbourhood in Calgary where it would be easy to score some heroin, or Toronto, or Montreal.”
Corbella says it’s her guess the drugs Monteith ended up with initially came from a Downtown Eastside contact. “By virtue of the fact it’s easy to get initially, he would have made contacts and had somebody who he could have called and had the drugs brought to him, I don’t know.”
“This is an issue that Vancouverites and the provincial government need to address. Harm reduction makes sense to some degree, but allowing open drug dealing and shooting up on the streets is not OK,” she adds.
The editorial also suggests that Monteith may have had a gofer go to Insite and buy him the drugs.
Clay Adams of Vancouver Coastal Health disagrees with column. “We were just blown away! It was so poorly done in the sense it wasn’t based on fact, it was nothing more than an opinion piece, a personal opinion based on some anectdotal perspective this individual had. That’s what really disappoints us.”
Adams says Insite is not a school for drug users. “Insite does not turn away people who are known injection drug users, people who are experienced at using injection drugs. The users have a very strict process in place where they know, through experience, who is a user and who is not.”
The 31-year-old actor was found dead inside a hotel room at the Fairmont Pacific Rim on Saturday.
The BC Coroners Service has confirmed a mix of alcohol and heroin caused Monteith’s death.
