Pubdate: Wed, 01 Nov 2006
Source: Powell River Peak (CN BC)
Copyright: 2006 Peak Publishing Ltd.
Contact:  http://www.prpeak.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/734
Author: Luke Brocki
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

BATTLING ADDICTION: THE FIGHT FOR CONTROL

Police Say Crack Cocaine And Heroin Plague The Streets Of Powell 
River. The Peak Follows A Drug User's Spiralling Social Descent

Part of that day still feels like a doctor's appointment. The motion 
sensor moans, a lady hurries to the window and I state my business. I 
wait in a foyer and rifle through some pamphlets. An old man walks in 
and sits down with a grunt. After a time, a door opens and someone 
calls my name. I am told to wait in another, smaller room. Finally, a 
man in a uniform knocks and enters. He asks me a series of questions. 
I fire back with ones of my own and he consults his files. He digs 
around in a bag and takes out some drugs. I count nine spitballs of 
crack cocaine, three spitballs of powder cocaine and a handful of 
morphine capsules.

Corporal Dennis Blanch, the man in charge of the general 
investigation section and municipal drug enforcement unit at the 
Powell River RCMP detachment, tells me John Smith (real name 
withheld), an addict police arrested a week ago for trafficking, had 
the drugs secreted in his anus. According to local police, cocaine 
and heroin are by far the most prevalent drugs in the area. Coupled 
with several counts of breached probation, these drugs just earned 
Smith 15 months in prison. I am told he flies out today. You mean 
he's here, I say. Can I see him?

Minutes later, a sick-looking Smith shuffles into the room, clad in a 
t-shirt, baggy jeans and white socks. I assure Blanch I'll be fine 
and he leaves the room.

"You look like hell," I tell Smith, hoping to break the ice.

"I was doing two grams of heroin a day until last week," he replies.

Hundreds of questions run through my mind, but I choose to voice a 
simple why. He studies the card I gave him just after we shook hands 
and begins to tell me his story.

He was 15 and good with electronics when drugs entered his life. He 
installed a car stereo for a man who couldn't pay him for the job. 
Instead, he gave him cocaine.

"I didn't want to do it. I was scared of it," says Smith.

But, enterprising, he accepted it, thinking he could make some money 
selling it off in portions. That was 1997. He did make some money and 
was lured back by the dollar. A week later, he was running drugs for 
an older dealer, getting $10 for every $50 he sold.

"Eventually, I thought, 'Forget keeping the $10, I'll do a rail."

Smith soon dropped out of school, moved in with the dealer and became 
a full-time drug runner.

"One day, we were sitting around and ran out of coke," he tells me. 
The dealer then whipped out a bag of heroin and things spiraled out of control.

"Next thing you know, I've got two drug habits. I'm doing heroin, I'm 
doing coke and I'm 16."

I ask about needles and Smith shows me his clean forearms. He tells 
me he can barely sit through vaccinations.

By 2001, he was addicted, sick and paranoid to the point of carrying 
a pistol. He moved to Lund and decided to quit. "I didn't know what 
to do to come off," he says. "I lay in bed, drank soup, ate crackers 
and smoked pot."

He spent several days bouncing between being feverish, soaked in 
sweat and freezing cold, but kicked the habit. He was suddenly sober, 
but also uneducated and unemployed. "Since I was basically just 
supporting my habit before, I thought there was money to be made in dealing."

Before long, he was arrested for trafficking. "It was my first ever 
criminal offence," he tells me. "I was scared to go to jail. Crown 
counsel wanted nine months. I ended up serving six."

Before that happened, he was released on a promise to appear. "I 
couldn't deal because I was busted, but I had all this dope left. So, 
I started using it."

He was using heroin everyday by the time he first went to jail. I ask 
him about the detox and rehab programs offered in jail, but he 
dismisses their effectiveness. "I did all the programs in jail: 
substance management, violence prevention, harm reduction," he says. 
"But how is that going to help anybody when I can make a phone call 
and get half an ounce of heroin thrown over the fence?"

His tale continued to the present, filled with moments of clarity and 
decisions to clean up alongside moments of weakness and decisions to 
reach for the drugs. "Come December 2005, I was hooked for the third 
time in my life," Smith tells me. "It's Christmas morning and I'm in 
my house smoking heroin."

Just then, the door opens and the interview is over. "I can't tell 
you what I need because I don't know," he tells me, fighting back 
tears as he's escorted out of the room. "I don't want to be a junkie 
all my life. But now I'm going to jail and I'll be all alone."

The system we have now is not an ideal system, but it's the only 
system we have, Blanch tells me when I see him again. "Because it's a 
disease of relapse, people are going to slip and fall when they're in 
a recovery state. But if someone is willing to show they are making 
an effort to change, I'm willing to go to bat for them and vouch for 
their credibility."

In the meantime, public interest is Blanch's first priority and Smith 
is going to jail. "It's giving the community a reprieve from his 
current criminal behaviour. At the same time, there are programs 
available that will give him a push toward recovery."

Melanie Johnson, a mental health and addictions clinician at Powell 
River Mental Health and Addiction Services, agrees. "There are some 
great addictions support programs in jail, but people must choose to 
go to them."

Those looking to stop using drugs in Powell River have a good support 
system, says Johnson. Access to medical detox in Vancouver is free. 
There is also a female social detox bed in town at Grace House, a 
male social detox bed in Comox and numerous residential addictions 
treatment centres throughout the province.

"Nobody is ever turned away due to lack of funds," she tells me. 
"Seeing us is free and we make referrals for free and get them into 
places for free."

Johnson admitted users must sometimes wait a week or so for the beds 
to become available, but stressed the problem of congestion is not as 
severe as that of other communities in the province.

Mental Health and Addictions is on the third floor of Powell River 
General Hospital, at 5000 Joyce Avenue. For more information readers 
can call 604.485.3300.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman