editorial comment You mean entrepreneurs are more efficient than government officials? That's a new one!

Addiction casts a dark shadow on people's lives. In the case of the Downtown Eastside, drug addiction has cast an even darker shadow on a community.

Walk down Hastings Street at any time of the day and you'll see how deep the drug problem runs.

Whether it's a middle-aged man bent over in an alley searching for needles as blood trickles down his arm or being approached every two minutes by a drug dealer offering crack cocaine, drugs are a huge part of life.

Police presence was usually high around dealer hotspots, but you get the sense there's not much they could do. Once the police show up, crowds disperse and carry on with their business elsewhere.

There doesn't seem to be a shortage of services available that cater to drug addicts. From simply protecting users with safe-injection sites to support for those ready to kick their habits, there are groups committed to curbing the problem.

However, there seems to be just as many people causing problems as there are trying to fix them.

While standing on the corner of Hastings and Columbia streets, I watched as a group of drug dealers as they went about their business not more than 10 feet away.

One of the men kept bags of cocaine in his mouth and spit them out as buyers showed up.

Buyers, mostly local residents, would shell out $5 to $10 for a small amount of drugs.

Many of the buyers were males in their 40s, but there were also young females and elderly couples who quickly made transactions.

Not everyone buying was from the area. A clean-shaven man, no more than 35 years old, in business-casual clothes and sunglasses, walked up to the dealers and asked how much he could score for $75. He received a batch of drugs and returned to the downtown core.

With the trend of treating drug addiction as a health issue rather than a criminal one and a focus on harm reduction, it seems like the dealers have won the war on the streets and government is trying to take the fight in a different direction - before it's too late.

It seemed that while the scourge of Crystal Meth is re-energizing the drug

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