Pubdate: Wed, 27 Mar 2002
Source: National Post (Canada)
Webpage: 
www.nationalpost.com/news/national/story.html?f=/stories/20020327/462364.html
Copyright: 2002 Southam Inc.
Contact:  http://www.nationalpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/286
Author: Charlie Gillis

THE REAL COWBOY JUNKIES

Known For Its Hockey Players And Wranglers, Central Alberta Now Produces A 
New Export: Drug Addicts

RED DEER, Alta. - The cellphone bleats and Buck Wells eases the ageing 
motorhome on to Gaetz Avenue, heading for a low-rise tenement neighbourhood 
in downtown Red Deer. Another junkie beckons, and she has scores of needles 
to trade.

For Mr. Wells, operator of what was until recently a mobile soup kitchen, 
this is the new reality of Central Alberta: The country once known for 
producing cowboys, hockey players and high-grade petroleum has a growing 
drug problem, and at this stage is ill-equipped to deal with it.

"We started out just taking clothes and blankets and things for the 
homeless," says Mr. Wells, a 59-year-old former country singer who now 
volunteers his time. "Then we agreed to do the needle exchange and that 
just took right off, too.... There's no methadone clinic and no detox 
centre in Red Deer, so right now, we're all they've got."

Mr. Wells, who began driving the Helping Hands van last October, is a 
front-line witness to an unexpected side effect of Alberta's steady 
urbanization and spectacular population growth.

In the last two years, AIDS prevention workers here have seen demand for 
clean needles rise from about 2,000 per month to 8,000, suggesting a 
dramatic rise in usage. In October -- before Mr. Wells began taking their 
needles with him on rounds -- they supplied an all-time high of 10,000.

How many addicts are living in the region is anyone's guess, but local 
health workers fear the number is far greater than the roughly 160 who make 
frequent use of the city's exchange service.

"It's unbelievable, and we're pretty certain it has to do with economics," 
says Phil Rauch, executive director of the Central Alberta AIDS Network, a 
government-funded agency whose needles Mr. Wells helps distribute.

"There was a time when we thought 2,000 was a lot of needles to go through 
in a month. Then we went up to 5,000 and then 8,000. And we're only seeing 
the ones who know the service is available."

Mr. Rauch believes a combination of factors has contributed to the spike, 
noting that it came long after his agency first made clean needles available.

Availability of product is one factor: Located on the corridor between 
Edmonton and Calgary, Red Deer is convenient to distributors of heroin and 
cocaine that arrives via those two cities from Vancouver and overseas. To 
complicate matters further, addicts have been obtaining morphine 
prescriptions by claiming they are trying to quit. The result has been a 
mini-market in morphine.

Sudden urban growth is also contributing. Red Deer is one of a group of 
Highway 2 communities that saw significant expansion through the late 
1990s. The recent federal census found the region's population increased by 
12% to about 2.1 million between 1996 and 2001, with Red Deer gaining more 
than 7,600 residents.

So quickly are some cities growing that location is becoming irrelevant. 
Major centres outside the central corridor are experiencing problems, too, 
though they have few indicators with which to measure them.

Police and health officials in fast-growing Fort McMurray have encouraged 
the Wood Buffalo HIV and AIDS Society to consider an exchange after RCMP 
last year turned up large needle caches and evidence of widespread cocaine 
abuse.

"It's kept so hidden in Fort McMurray," adds Lyn Gorman, the society's 
executive director. "There's so much wealth and pride in the community, I 
don't think people want to think of it as a city filled with dope."

Combine the migration to cities with a roaring regional economy and you 
have a recipe for trouble, says Mr. Rauch.

Many of Red Deer's drug users are young people who have left their homes 
and families behind to find work, but are unable to cope with their 
newfound freedom. "If they get a little off track with their partying, 
there's nobody like a mother or father or close friend to pull them back," 
he says.

Janice, the 21-year-old heroin user who contacts Mr. Wells on this night, 
is a case in point. She used nothing much stronger than marijuana while 
growing up in Sylvan Lake, a resort and farming town located about 30 
kilometres west of Red Deer. But she developed a heroin dependency after 
moving to the city, where she now stays to ensure a steady supply.

"People like their morphine, but me, I like my heroin," she rasps between 
puffs on a cigarette. "Cocaine is really easy to find, so that's what a lot 
of people are doing."

Seated in the motorhome, she could be a walking anti-drug advertisement. 
She clutches a paper bag containing 60 new needles and two elastic arm 
bands -- "rigs" that Janice expects to last her and a fellow addict several 
days.

Poor eating and the ravages of hepatitis C, which she contracted from a 
dirty needle more than a year ago, have reduced her tall frame to a thin 
line. Her wide blue eyes are surrounded by fields of darkness, and she 
starts at sudden movements.

But she has plenty to say about the drug-using community, warning that 
exchange services see little of the activity she does.

"People are hiding out. A lot of them shoplift to pay for their products 
and, believe me, they're not being careful. I've got a friend -- this 
girl's a very messy junkie -- who would use anybody's needle.

"One time she begged me for four hours to give her one of my used ones 
because she didn't have any."

The challenge, say Mr. Rauch and others, is to act before such behaviour 
produces an explosion in infection rates. While community awareness of the 
problem is growing, some residents and politicians resist the notion that a 
tidy, mid-sized city such as Red Deer could have a big-time drug problem. 
Needle exchanges and proposals for safe injection sites receive little 
public support.

Mr. Wells's service itself may be halted by the province's recent decision 
to eliminate local boards that distribute lottery proceeds: Money that 
helped get the motorhome on the road is headed into general revenue, and 
the service has not yet heard whether its grant will be available. And 
there's no guarantee money is the solution.

"A lot of people moved to this city because of its small-town feel," says 
Mr. Rauch. "I can understand them not wanting to let go of the myth, but 
the community's changing and eventually we're going to have to face up to it."
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