The Berkeley Barb provided extensive coverage of a packed and intense meeting, held at the Berkeley Free Clinic, to brainstorm the right approach to the problem of heroin in the local community.
There were a number of fissures in the meeting—for instance, between those who wanted to mount pickets to drive out drug dealers and those who advised against that approach. (This fissure pitted Moe Moskowitz, of Moe’s Books, against Fred Cody, of Cody’s Books.) The meeting ended, though, with agreement to circulate an anti-heroin petition and ask the city to consider the local heroin problem an emergency.
The article ends with a lengthy statement that was adopted by those at the meeting—one that condemned dealers as “pigs feeding off our brothers and sisters,” proposed the establishment of a city methadone clinic, and looked toward the purchase of a non-urban parcel of land that could be used as a sort of ‘halfway house’ by drug users looking to kick their habit.
The statement ended with an appeal that compared the plight of heroin addicts to the plight of those in state prisons: “FREE ALL PRISONERS CAUGHT BEHIND THE STEEL BARS OF HEROIN”.
