CRACK GOES MAINSTREAM

More And More Calgarians, From The Streets To Executive Suites, Fall
Prey To A Fast-Addicting Drug

As young undercover officers trying to infiltrate Calgary's drug
world in the mid-1990s, Monty Sparrow and Doug Hudacin bought
whatever illicit drugs they could get their hands on.

For four years, the pair purchased everything from heroin to
marijuana to prescription drugs. Over time they noticed a disturbing
trend: crack cocaine, a drug once relegated to the ghettos of big
cities like New York and Chicago, was becoming more and more
plentiful on this city's streets.

By 1999, says Sparrow, "all we were buying was crack."

Eight years later, the crack cocaine trade shows no signs of slowing down.

"The amount of crack out there today is even higher," says Sparrow,
now staff sergeant of the Calgary Police Service's drug unit.

"Nobody can say for sure" how much crack cocaine is entering our
city, says Hudacin, a detective and the force's resident drug expert.

One thing is certain: the trafficking of illicit drugs in Calgary has
soared over the past few years.

"A decade ago, one officer said five kilos of cocaine were coming
into town in a month. But now it's probably well over 100 kilos of
coke that will be converted to crack cocaine, coming to Calgary every
month. It's hard to attach a concrete number to it -- it's an educated guess."

The police service's most recent annual statistical report, for 2005,
showed drug offences increasing by 30 per cent over the past six
years, trafficking offences up 49 per cent and crack cocaine offences
up 113 per cent.

The two veteran officers don't need hard and fast numbers to convince
them that crack cocaine is a growing problem in our city. Even

Alberta's smaller communities are seeing the trend.

Others on the front lines of the drug wars support this view:
academics, psychologists, counsellors -- and the addicts themselves.

Not only is crack cocaine more prevalent than ever, they say, its
influence is cutting across socioeconomic lines. While many of its
users are society's most marginalized -- its presence obvious on the
city's streets and hooker strolls -- it's also increasingly becoming
the drug of choice for an upscale clientele.

Some observers see it as another symptom of the "affluenza" epidemic:
one more unanticipated downside of the current economic boom.

Crack -- a drug made by mixing and cooking cocaine, water and baking
soda until it forms a rock that is smoked to produce a high -- has
never before experienced such an elevated position in our society.

But it wasn't that long ago that crack had the seediest of reputations.

First showing up in U.S. urban centres in the 1980s, the drug became
such a scourge among the lower classes that in 1989 half of all
felony arrests in New York City were crack-related.

By 1986, Time Magazine had declared crack addiction the No. 1 issue
facing America. Newsweek would later call crack the most significant
story in the United States since Vietnam and Watergate.

An ABC News special called it a plague "eating away at the fabric of
America," while NBC labelled crack "America's drug of choice."

The outrage over crack's grip on society led to an overhaul of U.S. drug laws.

By 2000, however, the New York Times declared crack cocaine no longer
a societal threat with a series entitled The War on Crack Retreats.
The combination of tougher policing and laws, along with a tarnished
reputation as a drug for losers, it said, were to blame. The term
"crack head" was deemed the highest insult, even on the mean streets
of urban America.

So how, in 2007, has crack resurfaced in cities like Calgary as a
drug of choice for some members of mainstream society?

"Gangs should be given PhDs in marketing," says Dr. Louis Pagliaro.
"Somehow in the last few years, they've convinced people that meth is
the poor man's drug and crack is the new Cadillac, the rich man's drug."

Pagliaro, a professor in educational psychology at the University of
Alberta, has been tracking drug trends for more than 30 years and was
the RCMP's key expert witness during a landmark crack trial in
Alberta in 1995. He just finished his 14th book with his wife and
fellow professor Ann Marie Pagliaro, called Gangs, Drugs and Violent
Crime Among Canadian Youth.

He won't use the word epidemic when it comes to crack use, only
because "I've been chastised for saying that. But call it what you want."

He says our province is ripe for such a development. "Albertans are
working the longest hours in the country, calls to your city's
distress lines are hitting record numbers," he says. "A boom can
create a lot of unhappiness."

Where there are unhappy people, there is always substance abuse.
"I've treated everyone from multiple murderers to Hollywood movie
stars, and they all have one thing in common -- unhappiness. They use
drugs to alter that state of unhappiness."

But why crack?

Pagliaro says so-called drugs of choice are anything but. Organized
crime, he says, has the biggest influence by flooding the market
withcertain narcotics.

"Cocaine is the major lifeblood of these gangs," says Pagliaro, who
adds that alcohol is still king when it comes to abused substances.
"It's the way they support any and all of their criminal activities."

While crack cocaine appears to be cheap at first glance -- a rock can
cost anywhere from $5 to $20 -- its short high (about 10 minutes)
means the addict will often need 20 or more hits a day. Some
hard-core users report taking from 50 to 100 hits.

"They're making a lot of money off one drug," says Pagliaro. "These
days, you can hardly find any powdered cocaine on the streets,
because the gangs have decided they'd rather sell crack."

Despite crack's emergence as a popular drug, it's impossible to find
accurate statistics on its use. Health Canada states on its website
that "because cocaine is an illicit drug, the number of users can
never be determined definitively. Not everyone who uses cocaine will
admit use if asked in a survey, or will accurately recall consumption."

Some critics say that because crack also has the distinction of
creating poverty in its users more quickly than most other drugs,
self-reporting will never give an accurate picture. That's because
crack users deep into their addictions rarely even have homes
anymore, let alone telephones.

Add to that the fact that most government surveys here and in other
parts of the world group crack together with powdered cocaine, which
is snorted.

Still, studies like the Canadian Addiction Survey, published in 2004,
found that more than 14 per cent of males, and 10.6 per cent of the
total population, reported having tried cocaine.

Dr. Ron Lim doesn't need spreadsheets or polls to convince him of
crack's growing prevalence. A professor with the University of
Calgary's faculty of medicine, Lim is involved in the addictions
field on a number of fronts, from consulting with the Foothills
Addiction Centre in Calgary and a private facility in B.C., to
helping out at the Renfrew Recovery Centre, a detox centre in the
city run by the Alberta Alcohol and Drug Abuse Commission.

"In every aspect of what I am doing, I am seeing more cocaine and
crack cocaine," he says. "At Renfrew, crack addiction is now second
only to alcohol."

Another problem with this highly addictive drug, Lim points out, is
that dealers often add other dangerous substances into the mix, so
the user isn't getting pure cocaine. "They cut it with everything
from Tylenol to Procaine (a topical anesthetic) to maybe even a bit
of crystal meth and heroine. You really have no guarantee what you're getting."

While he acknowledges an increase in professionals joining the ranks
of the crack addicted, Lim says he rarely treats them. "The waiting
list in Alberta is four to eight weeks, and it's almost all
government-run," he says. "People with money don't want to wait, and
they don't want to sit beside a homeless person in treatment. They're
heading to private treatment centres in British Columbia."

Cocaine and crack cocaine, he says, are psychologically, not
physically, addictive. That makes it one of the toughest addictions to treat.

"Cocaine is extremely difficult to quit," he says, adding that if you
took 100 people and gave them alcohol, statistically 10 per cent
would become addicted. "For cocaine, it would be around 17 to 20 per
cent. It is such a dangerous drug to try."

"If you take a drug, you can become addicted," says Dr. Perry Sirota,
director of Serenity House Drug & Alcohol Treatment Centre in
Calgary. "It doesn't matter how much money you make, how educated you are."

Sirota understands why there has been much media coverage and
government interest in methamphetamines -- the Premier's Task Force
on Crystal Meth, for instance -- because "meth is a pretty horrible
drug, with permanent effects." But he can't understand why crack
isn't getting at least equal attention.

"There are a heck of a lot more people in this province using crack
than crystal meth."

Sirota says that he's seeing a lot more middle and upper middle
income crack addicts, partly because "they were using powder, but
then found that was harder and harder to get. They won't think about
the fact crack is worse, they just think about replacing that high."

His clientele has extended to include professionals in the finance
and legal fields, people in positions of trust with easy access to
cash. Fraud cases, where businesspeople have dipped into company and
client funds, he says, can almost always be traced to either a drug
or gambling addiction.

"I treat sex workers who tell me they can point to any high-end
office building in the downtown core and say that's where they go at
night with professionals to party and smoke crack."

When the average person thinks of a crack addict, says Neal Berger,
"I'll bet they see a male from 18 to 35, who has long, straggly dark
hair and looks like he just got out of the criminal justice system.

"They don't picture a guy with a Porsche or a middle-aged homemaker."

But Berger, who has been treating addicts for 30 years and is
executive director of the Cedars at Cobble Hill, a residential
treatment centre near Duncan, B.C., says that's what he's seeing more
and more of every day. And a growing number of Albertans are using
his centre's services.

Berger says Alberta's runaway economy has created a unique set of
problems among its workforce.

"Dealing with places like Fort McMurray," says Berger, who regularly
consults with the province's oil and gas industry, "is like trying to
change an entire nation."

He says the growth of illicit drugs like crack among the ranks of the
employed is one of the biggest workplace issues today.

"The cost to business and industry is astronomical," he says. Not to
mention the risks to safety. "You have addicts who are operating
heavy machinery and other equipment that requires a lot of attention."

If crack users and addicts aren't prone to confessing their
proclivities to government canvassers, one place some feel
comfortable is an organization like Cocaine Anonymous (CA).

"We don't ask them what you do for a living," says John, a representative

of the Calgary chapter of CA. (In keeping with CA's anonymity policy,
he won't divulge his real name.) "But you can tell when someone's in
a nice business suit that they're not your stereotypical crack user."

In his dozen years counselling fellow crack addicts, he's seen a huge
shift from the use of powdered cocaine to crack.

"You never hear the term freebasing now," says John. "It's all crack,
and it's so easy to get it. You just have to know who to ask."

John, who has been clean from his crack addiction for 12 years and
has a construction business, says he understands how difficult it is
to shake the drug, despite his own long-term success.

"It's psychologically addictive, so it becomes a mental obsession,"
he says. "Just trying to say no, it seems physically impossible for
an addict. The rush is so good, but so short, so it just leaves you
wanting more."

For Calgary police, how much money a crack addict may have in his or
her bank account is of no interest. "We're not targeting the
millionaires, or any other addict," says Sparrow, of the CPS drug unit.

"Our emphasis is on the traffickers, the guys making the money off of
the addicts."

By introducing illicit drugs into the community, the producers and
dealers are causing more harm than just to those ingesting their
product. "Anywhere drugs are present, every kind of crime goes up,"
says Sparrow.

"Violence, petty crimes, burglaries, robberies, murders."

But while finding down-and-out crack addicts such as prostitutes and
street people is easy, the increasing numbers of addicts with money
and a fixed address can go undercover for a long time -- long enough
to use up all their savings and eventually lose everything.

"Everybody has an image of what a crack addict looks like," says
Hudacin, Sparrow's partner.

"They'd be pretty surprised to see some of them. Crack addiction runs
the full socioeconomic spectrum in Calgary."

Cocaine And Crack: A Primer

- - Cocaine is a powerful drug made from the South American coca bush.
Its street names include coke, C, snow and flake.

- - Cocaine is sold as a fine white powder. Street dealers sometimes
dilute it with substances like cornstarch or sugar, or local
painkillers like benzocaine. Users often snort cocaine. They also
dissolve it in water and inject it into their veins.

- - Heating cocaine hydrochloride with baking soda makes crack. The
mixture forms a solid chunk composed of chemicals that include
freebase cocaine. It gets its name from the crackling sound it makes
when being cooked. Crack chunks are also known as "rock." Freebase is
a pure form of cocaine that can also be smoked. Some crack and
freebase users inhale the vapours from heated glass pipes. Others add
them to tobacco or marijuana cigarettes.

- - All forms of cocaine have the same effects. But injecting produces
these effects more quickly and intensely than snorting. Smoking it
causes the most intense and addictive high.

Cocaine And Crack's Effects:

- - Cocaine can make you feel intense pleasure. You can feel alert,
energetic and confident. Using cocaine increases your breathing,
heart rate and blood pressure. It dilates your pupils, decreases your
appetite and reduces your need to sleep.

- - Large doses of cocaine can produce euphoria, severe agitation,
anxiety,erratic and violent behaviour, twitching, hallucinations,
blurred vision, headaches, chest pains, rapid shallow breathing,
muscle spasms, nausea and fever.

- - Overdose can cause seizures, strokes, heart attacks, kidney
failure, coma and death. Use is linked with suicides, murder and
fatal accidents.

- - A cocaine high can last from five minutes to two hours. When users
"crash" they feel very depressed, anxious and irritable. Many users
take repeated doses to maintain the high and avoid the crash. Some
users try to modify the effects or stop binges with drugs like
alcohol, tranquilizers or heroin. Respiratory arrest is a common
cause of death from cocaine overdose.

- - Heavy cocaine users can feel depressed, restless, agitated and
nervous. They can have sleeping, eating and sexual problems. They can
have dramatic mood swings, delusions, hallucinations and paranoia.
High blood pressure and irregular heartbeats occur. Repeated use may
cause long-lasting problems with memory, attention and behaviour.

- - Possessing, producing and trafficking in cocaine can result in
fines, prison sentences and a criminal record.

Cocaine And Addiction:

- - People who use cocaine heavily over a long period, or binge for
several days, develop a tolerance. They need to take more of the drug
to feel the same effects.

- - Regular users can develop powerful psychological dependence, a
relentless craving for the drug. They continue to use the drug even
when it causes overwhelming physical, mental and social problems.

Withdrawal:

- - Withdrawal from cocaine causes few physical effects, but the
psychological effects, including loss of pleasure,

depression and low energy, are severe. Three phases of withdrawal have been

described. Phase 1, the "crash," follows the end of the binge and
lasts for up to four days. The user has very low energy, may sleep
for days and may eat large amounts of food.

- - During Phase 2, which lasts for two to 12 weeks, the user feels
little initiative, intense boredom, and minimal pleasure from life.
This limited existence, as compared with the memories of drug-induced
euphoria, can lead to severe craving, resumption of cocaine use and
cycles of recurrent binges.

- - Phase 3, "extinction," gradually follows if no drug is taken for
many months. Normal function returns and eventually craving
decreases, or at least is not associated with a relapse to drug use.

Source: Alberta Alcohol and Drug Abuse Commission