STREETS WILL GET MEANER IF DRUG RUMOUR TRUE

Drug users in the Downtown Eastside are being warned through flyers at
shelters and community outreach centres that a large shipment of cocaine
cut with fibreglass is on its way to Vancouver streets.

Judy McGuire, manager of health outreach services at the Downtown Eastside
Youth Activities Society, which issued the alert, said the group was tipped
off by clients from the street. "Everything that comes in we take seriously
and put it out there. It helps people better take care of themselves."

A flyer on the bulletin board of the Lookout Emergency Aid Society warns
users that fibreglass is toxic, and possible side effects of injection
include fever, an increase in the number or severity of sores, skin
irritations or rashes. Inhaling fibreglass through smoking could have the
same side effects, along with bleeding lungs.

McGuire said because street drugs like cocaine and heroin are illegal,
there's no testing facilities for them and because they don't fall under
the Health Protection Branch, there's no way to monitor them.

In the last year, she said, ambulance service workers were sure some street
drugs were being cut with strychnine because they started seeing temporary
paralysis in street users.

Shipments of heroin have sometimes been so pure that overdoses surged, but
McGuire said that doesn't happen often because the more pushers cut their
drugs, the more profit they make. "You never know what's been cut into the
drugs, but there's no easy way to test them," she said. "It's a difficult
situation. As long as these drugs are sold on the black market, it's always
going to happen. It even happened during prohibition when alcohol was
illegal. People were being poisoned. If they're illegal there are no
standards and no way of ever knowing what's really in them."

Const. Dave Dickson, who's been walking the streets of the Downtown
Eastside for 21 years, said rumours like this usually originate on the
street, often with the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, which keeps an
eye on the drug scene.

"Sometimes it's something they've read in the paper and then they spread
the word," he said. "For example, they'll read about something that's
happened in the States and hear the shipment is headed this way. Then
they'd put out a warning."