NUNAVUMMIUT: CANADA'S CHAMPION DOPERS

Wealthy Iqaluit A Drug Capital.

IQALUIT - Nunavut residents out-toke, out-snort and out-sniff the
average Canadian by a wide margin.

And according to Nunavut's drug cops, substance abuse in the
territory is fast getting worse.

Cpl. Jim Christensen spent two years as the head of drug enforcement
for the RCMP's V Division before retiring last month. In that time he
saw the flow of narcotics into Nunavut become a flood.

"There's dramatically more," he said. "And it's better quality - more
potent. Its use is widespread. I'm surprised by the amount of people
who use it."

A study released in June by the Conference Board of Canada, an
Ottawa-based think tank, identifies marijuana as the drug of choice
in the territory.

Nunavut's Inuit indulge in it at four times the national average,
with nearly a third - 32.5 per cent - having smoked pot or hash in
the year prior to the survey.

Non-Inuit in Nunavut aren't just saying no, either: Their pot-smoking
rate is 65 per cent higher than the Canadian average. Over 12 per
cent admitted they'd gotten stoned within the year.

Christensen said pot-smoking in Nunavut cuts across racial
boundaries. "The only color that matters is green," he said. "The
only issue is whether you have money or whether you don't."

Money to Burn

According to RCMP estimates, around 20 pounds of pot are smuggled
into Nunavut each week. That works out to more than a half-tonne per
year, with a resale value of around $25 million.

That's nearly $1,000 per year for every man, woman and child in
Nunavut: enough cash to construct 165 public-housing units, cut the
price of gas in half, or hire a half-dozen extra nurses and cops for
every community in the territory.

The pot that comes to the Kitikmeot and Kivalliq regions usually
starts in the lush woodlands of British Columbia, where marijuana is
the province's biggest cash-crop.

In the Baffin, most marijuana originates in Ontario and Quebec.
There, indoor pot-growing operations have boomed in recent years,
making marijuana far more available to the North.

The surge in Southern pot-cultivation has pushed pot ahead of hashish
as the Baffin's favourite narcotic. A few years ago the two drugs
were equally prevalent here, but now pot is four times as common.

Very little marijuana is actually grown in Nunavut - "to my
knowledge," Christensen said. Some Nunavummiut may raise a few plants
under grow-lamps in their bedrooms, he said, but they're probably
smoking everything they harvest.

Since they're not selling drugs, the drug cops don't target them.

The marijuana that flows into the Baffin region comes through Iqaluit
- - and most of it stays there.

Christensen estimates the city accounts for 85-90 per cent of
Nunavut's pot consumption, though it has only 20 per cent of the
territory's population.

Iqaluit the Drug Capital

Iqaluit is the Canadian Arctic's drug capital because it's wealthy
and easy to get to. "We're only a hop, skip and a jump from the
South," Christensen said from his Iqaluit office. "There's much more
(marijuana) readily at hand."

By Northern standards, Iqalungmiut are rich. With the growth of jobs
in government and Inuit organizations, residents have money to burn -
literally.

For the same reason, pot is also popular in regional centres like
Cambridge Bay and Rankin Inlet, and in well-to-do hamlets like Cape
Dorset and Pangnirtung, where residents are flush with cash from art
and tourism.

In the last year, with jobs and wealth moving to decentralized
communities, drugs seem to be flowing there too.

Before he came to Iqaluit two years ago, Christensen was posted in
Pond Inlet. He recently went back and found that the community's drug
problem has increased dramatically.

Supply and Demand

The price of pot varies wildly in the territory, based mainly on
whether it's being bought in an isolated hamlet or a regional centre.

The price can also climb after a major bust, when the supply is
reduced and when dealers are more wary about doling out their goods.

In Iqaluit, where drugs are at a discount, a "street gram" of
marijuana fetches about $30. A street gram equals about six-tenths of
a metric gram.

As in any business, supply, demand and quality affect the price. When
there's lots of pot in Iqaluit, or when the weed is poor quality,
street grams can jump to seven-tenths of a metric gram and prices can
fall to a cut-rate $25.

In Arctic Bay - a two-hour, $960 plane ride north of Nunavut's
capital - prices are four times as high. There, a street gram might
be only four-tenths of a metric gram, but would fetch around $75.

For drug-traffickers, there's serious cash to be made by bringing pot
to the North. Where a pound of pot in Ontario would sell for between
$1,500 and $5,000, it would fetch around $25,000 on the streets of
Iqaluit.

"The underlying factor is greed, greed, greed," Christensen said.

People who've moved up from the South control most of the territory's
drug trade, he said. "And all the money goes back down South."

Other Drugs

Compared to marijuana, most other narcotics are rare in Nunavut.

Hard drugs like heroin don't have much of a market here, Christensen
said. The same is true for LSD and other hallucinogens.

Cocaine, though, is on the upswing. It's snorted mainly by wealthy
Iqalungmiut, though small amounts go to Cape Dorset and Pangnirtung.

"You have to have money for cocaine," Christensen said.

About five ounces of coke comes to Iqaluit each week. It sells for
around $200 per street gram. Users often buy three street grams for
$500.

An even more disturbing drug statistic is the prevalence of the
territory's cheapest drug: inhalants.

According to the Conference Board of Canada study, more than a
quarter of Nunavut's Inuit - 25.6 per cent - reported having sniffed
potentially brain-damaging solvents and aerosols sometime during
their life.

That's 30 times the Canadian average of 0.8 per cent, and 10 times
the non-Inuit Nunavummiut average of 2.6 per cent.

What About Booze?

Of course, Nunavut's most harmful drug - liquor - is legal in
Iqaluit, and semi-legal in some other communities.

According to the Conference Board report, Nunavut's Inuit drink less
frequently than other Canadians.

Only 12 per cent of Inuit said they drink alcohol at least once a
week, compared to nearly 35 per cent of Canadians.

The per cent of non-Inuit Nunavummiut who drink is equal to the
Canadian average. But while Inuit drink three times less frequently
than other Canadians, they're three times more likely to get drunk.

One quarter of Nunavut's Inuit say they knock back five or more
drinks at a sitting. That's compared to 21.3 per cent of non-Inuit
Nunavummiut, and 8.8 per cent of all Canadians.

Even Jim Christensen, whose job it was to battle the drug boom in
Nunavut, admits booze is a bigger problem.

In Iqaluit, three-quarters of the crimes - from rape and murder to
vandalism and reckless driving - can be linked to people who are
liquored up.

"The alcohol problem by far overshadows the drug problem,"
Christensen said. "Most violent crime occurs with alcohol involved."