OVERDOSE SUSPECTED IN WEEKEND DEATHS

Two people found dead in a Harvey Avenue home early Saturday appear to be
the latest victims of the ongoing plague of drug use in Kelowna.

A friend discovered the bodies of a 33-year-old man and 26-year-old woman
in a basement suite in the 800 block of Harvey at 3 a.m. Saturday. Police
and medical staff suspect they died from an overdose of hard drugs.

"It looked like a combination of drugs. It's not a specific case of highly
potent or laced drugs," said RCMP Cpl. Reg Burgess.

A pathologist performed autopsies of the victims in Penticton on Monday. It
will take two to three weeks for the toxicology tests to confirm what drugs
they took.

While marijuana long accounted for most of the drug use in the Central
Okanagan, heroin, cocaine and ecstasy are now popular, primarily among
younger people. Mike Guzzi, former Crime Stoppers boss in Kelowna, said in
January a heroin and cocaine epidemic is emerging as a major problem.

"There is a tremendous amount of cocaine out there," he said. "Three years
ago, maybe four or five per cent of the tips that came to us involved
cocaine and heroin. Now it's 30 per cent - at least a six-fold increase. At
this rate, the hard-drug tips will be outpacing marijuana tips in another
four years."

In January, the death of 19-year-old Danielle Marie Conlin - an addict
whose boyfriend, Scott Overholt, took a fatal overdose last fall - made
news after she was found unconscious in a Kelowna parking lot. She wasn't
wearing a winter coat and died a short time later.

A friend of Conlin's said Kelowna's drug scene has exploded in only a
couple of years.

"The amount of hard drugs here just blew my mind," he said. "Kelowna has a
big drug problem. You can get cocaine anywhere and everywhere and heroin
isn't much harder to find.

Hard drugs are flowing into the Valley in return for locally grown
marijuana bud that's exported to the U.S.

Dealers, who sometimes swap pot for cocaine pound for pound, are importing
a problem that has devastated the East Side of Vancouver and claimed dozens
of young people in the Interior.

In 1999, there were six fatal overdoses in the Okanagan. Last year, the
number doubled to 12.

"If people there really knew what the long arm of drugs has been doing,
they would be shocked," said Reta Derkson, a counsellor at the Riverside
Hospital on the Coast who has worked with young addicts from the Okanagan.

"You always think of Kelowna as this nice city, but the underworld of drug
dealers is taking lives there all the time."

Saturday's victims will be identified after their relatives are notified.