The butterfly effect...

Surrey, British Columbia is a large municipality in Metro Vancouver. It’s home to about 400,000 people. It’s the burbs, the stix, les banlieues.

Last year, it was also home to a record setting twenty-five murders. This compared to the City of Vancouver proper which has about 150,000 more people but a comparatively miniscule rate of six murders in 2013.

The last murder of 2013 in Surrey was also the one which caused the most amount of outrage I can recall. Julie Paskall, a volunteer who had just finished time keeping a minor league hockey game at Newton arena, was brutally attacked and killed during a botched robbery.

A hockey mom murdered—for what? $40 bucks cash?

Just reading the news stories, it’s obvious that the murder of a completely innocent hockey mom has touched a raw nerve not just in Surrey but across Canada. Looking at the comments placed in response to the stories, it’s evident that these acts of violence have prompted some communal reflection. 

Obviously, there’s a lot of people who say that we need more police, or we need tougher sentences or judges. But tougher sentences won’t bring back dead people, and it’s debatable whether mandatory sentences actually help to deter the incidences of crime. And for those saying that more police is the solution; the murder at the hockey arena occurred 300 metres away from the Newton Community Police Station. People aren’t afraid of the cops until the cops are in front of them.

I think all these reactions are natural, but I don't think that one can really start with solutions until they can clearly identify the root of the problem. 

All this chatter made me think a bit on why these acts of violence take place in our society. In this particular case, the motivation to rob Julie Paskall was probably not to make the next mortgage payment or finance a startup—it’s safe to assume that the cash was used to score the perpetrator's next hit. As I understand, twenty dollars might buy one crack rock which is good for a high of about fifteen or twenty minutes.

It blows my mind to think that somebody is so controlled by a substance that they would literally kill somebody for twenty minutes of euphoria.

Regardless, it’s another illustration that drugs kill, both users and non-users alike; and the consequences of drug use are often times felt many degrees away from the drug users, dealers or bystanders killed. Family and friends of all parties, children conceived and growing up in squalor with absent parents, businesses and schools. This isn't even mentioning the amount of money that is spent by those who traffic/import the drugs, or the entire government apparatus developed to combat drugs. It’s hard to think of anything else that contributes to the erosion of our society in the same way as drugs. Not climate change, not a pandemic, not the shady business practices…

Others might say that decriminalization would prevent such violence from occurring in the first place. After all, people don’t kill over alcohol. That might be true if one doesn’t consider the numerous violent domestics or assaults exacerbated by alcohol consumption. Furthermore, legalization of alcohol has done nothing to stop the disease of alcoholism and the negative health effects of alcohol. Would the family of an alcoholic say that legalization of alcohol has been a good thing? 

At the end of the day, it’s a tragedy that a hockey mom was murdered in Surrey. But it’s a tragedy that repeats itself every single day when a person makes that first conscious choice to do illegal drugs and ultimately go down the road towards ceding control of their lives to the whims of a drug dependency.