Source: N.Y. Times News Service
Pubdate: 20 Aug 1998
Author: ANTHONY DePALMA

VANCOUVER BECOMING DRUG MECCA, AND AUTHORITIES FIGHT BACK

VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Fame easily finds a place like this, with
its climate so embracing, its surroundings so inspiring and its population
leavened so liberally with artists and new immigrants.

Yet, as a fortune cookie in one of Vancouver's countless Chinese
restaurants might read, fame is fleeting, and what is fabulous one day can
turn very foul the next.

Vancouver is quickly gaining a reputation as a haven for illicit drugs and
those who use them. From the brazen addicts shooting up and buying heroin
and cocaine around the intersection of Hastings and Main Street to the
enormous amount of high-potency marijuana that is raised, sold and openly
smoked on streets and in cafes, Vancouver's tolerance of drugs is
attracting attention.

"I heard that you could smoke and nobody bothered you," said Adam, a lanky
19-year-old from Seattle who came with two friends for an overnight trip.
They easily bought marijuana on the street around Hastings, then --
somewhat shyly -- entered the Cannabis Cafe, a marijuana mecca for many
West Coast Americans.

While one friend picked at a green salad mixed with a few hemp seeds, Adam
took out a joint and, somewhat uneasily, lit it. Soon he relaxed. "It's a
good environment, 'cause you can't smoke cigarettes, you can only smoke
marijuana," he said. "You don't have the smokey bar atmosphere, just a
pleasant smell."

Other customers casually lit up their joints and the smell of marijuana was
as inescapable as popcorn at a movie theater.

"Vancouver is the most tolerant spot in Canada when it comes to different
life styles and cultures," said Sister Icee, a 38-year-old Toronto woman
once known as Shelley Francis who has owned the Cafe, and the Hemp BC store
next door, since April.

Although police have raided the place three times (once since she took over
and twice last year under a different owner) the Cannabis Cafe still
celebrates marijuana. On the wall is a painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe,
Mexico's patron saint, who stands serenely in her starred gown, surrounded
by tall marijuana stalks. The menu put together by the chef, Christopher
Anstee, features pasta with hemp pesto, salads with hemp dressing and
quesadillas that use hemp tortillas made by a man named Melvin.

"There's no harm in it," said Sister Icee. Lighting an oversized, filtered
joint, she said she lived in the West Indies for most of the 1980s and
joined the Rastafarian sect, which gave her her name and introduced her to
marijuana, "the weed of wisdom."

"Marijuana is a plant," she said. "You can't prosecute people for smoking
flowers. It shouldn't be regulated any more than parsley or broccoli." For
Vancouver officials, the Cannabis Cafe is a public relations nightmare.

"We don't like the reputation that things like that bring to the city,"
said Bruce Chambers, chief constable of the Vancouver police department.
After the last raid in April, police charged Sister Icee with selling drug
paraphernalia in the Hemp BC store. On a recent visit, the store carried
shoes, shirts and snowboards all made with hemp, along with pipes, bongs
and cigarette rolling papers.

Now, the city intends to deny Sister Icee the licenses she needs to run the
store and cafe, working through the city council, not the courts. "They're
going to be toast by September," said Vancouver Mayor Philip Owen.

Cannabis Cafe is only one part of Vancouver's problem.

"Vancouver has been called Vansterdam, and we're not proud of it," said Ken
Doran, an inspector with the police department's drug unit. Police have
raided and shut down 82 hydroponic marijuana growing operations this year,
confiscating $14 million worth of pot. The growers use basements, attics,
sometimes entire houses to put out high yield crops, Chambers said.

Police analysts say the pot is grown under such favorable conditions that
it is high in tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC -- the chemical compound that
gives marijuana its punch. The THC content is 25 to 28 percent, compared
with the 2 percent or less that was common just a few years ago, police said.

British Columbia marijuana has become so popular that U.S. Customs Service
agents have increased patrols to try to slow down the cross-border trade.

Beyond marijuana, Vancouver estimates that there are as many as 15,000 IV
drug users in British Columbia, most of them in Vancouver. Almost any time,
the area around Hastings and Main crawls with addicts, many drawn by the
cheap rooms or the free needle exchange program that gives out about 2.5
million needles a year in an effort to fight AIDS. Police say the all-night
grocery stores in the area that carry a few cans of soup and packages of
cookies are just fronts for drug buys.

In recent weeks, the province's coroner announced that drugs had killed a
record 201 people in the first half of 1998, the majority of them in
Vancouver. Then a medical report indicated a vast need for treatment
programs and proposed that hard-core addicts be given free heroin to keep
them from robbing to support their habits, a position that Chambers
conditionally supported.

"It's time somebody steps forward and says the war on drugs is lost," said
Chief Coroner Larry Campbell.

The national police force, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, is unwilling
to concede defeat. However, Richard Barszczewski, who heads the Mounties'
drug awareness program in British Columbia, noted that law enforcement
alone cannot solve the drug problem.

The city itself is divided by the drug problem and unsure of what to do
next. Owen and Chambers say that prosecutors and judges are just too soft
on people convicted of drug charges.

"We give sentences that we believe are appropriate," said Robert Metzger,
chief judge of the provincial court, in response to the criticism. "People
like to point to judges because we're easy targets. But this seems to be a
social and political problem."

Libby Davies, the member of Parliament who represents the area around
Hastings and Main, calls for more national funds to cope with Vancouver's
drug epidemic. She supports not only providing free heroin to hard-core
addicts, but clinics where they can safely inject. Ms. Davies is not
concerned that such programs, already tried in Europe, might cement
Vancouver's reputation as the Amsterdam of North America.

"The situation at Hastings and Main couldn't get worse," she said. "This is
not about the city's reputation. It's about saving lives."

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Checked-by: Mike Gogulski