ESCAPING DRUG SCENE NOT EASY

Editor's note: We've changed the names of the youth interviewed for
this story to protect their identities.

She's 14 and when she starts talking about her early childhood, her
voice shakes and she gets fidgety.

Her 18-year-old boyfriend sitting next to her reaches for the girl's
hand.

"When I was 10, I was taken from my mom 'cause she was doing meth and
crack," the girl says.

The two teens are sitting in the waiting room at the James Bay Youth
Clinic. For the sake of this article, we'll call the girl Jane and her
boyfriend John.

For the next four years of her life, Jane flipped between living with
her mom, her dad and a foster home. She says the years spent facing
her mom's addictions completely turned her off the drug scene.

"I won't go near that stuff," she says, staring straight ahead. "I
think it's nasty."

She didn't always think that way. After being taken from her mom's
home, Jane started using other drugs, namely ecstasy and marijuana.
She says she became addicted to E (as ecstasy is known), or at least
what is passed off as the drug. Ecstasy is often cut with other drugs,
such as crystal meth or cocaine.

"When I was doing it, I didn't give two shits because it was just a
drug," Jane says, clutching John's hand. She explains how she didn't
feel sober for months, her eyes drift upward, as if sorting through
hazy memories.

She picks one memory of riding the ferry to her father's house on the
Mainland at a time when she used E regularly and hardly ever quit
drinking. "I was on 'shrooms. I went into the bathroom and looked in
the mirror. I looked so disgusting. I told myself I had to get off
this shit."

Both Jane and John have old friends from elementary school who have
been "screwed up" by drugs, whether that's crack, ecstasy or crystal
meth. They couldn't say which was the most popular.

Although a number of authorities in Victoria (Crack's back, Saanich
News, Jan. 16) have said crack-cocaine is the drug of choice among
adults, studies show that's not true for people under the age 20 who
live in stable homes.

A 2007 study called A Different Path to Adulthood: The Case of
Street-Involved Youth by researchers from the Canadian Institutes of Health
Research compared Victoria street youth, aged 14-20, to those living in
stable housing situations.

It found that, besides marijuana, hallucinogens (mushrooms, LSD, acid)
were the most popular drug among stable youth - one in six
participants had used it in the past year. Second most popular were
so-called club drugs, such as ecstasy.

Ten per cent of stable youth had recently used crack or cocaine and
just three per cent had used amphetamines, which includes crystal meth.

Marion Selfridge, an outreach worker who counsels teens and young
adults at the Youth Clinic, has seen a spike in the popularity of club
or rave drugs.

"We're seeing more of the ecstasy tabs," she said. "But I say that
loosely because the tabs are sold as ecstasy but they're laced (with
other drugs)."

Ecstasy use among youth made headlines in October when four teens
overdosed on a drug (likely crystal meth) that had been cut into
ecstasy tabs.

"Over the last three or four years now, in a bigger way it (ecstasy)
is being introduced to the youth population," Selfridge said, as
dealers appeal to teens by labelling the tabs as a "love drug."

Drug use not an epidemic

Drug use among youth isn't as prominent in Greater Victoria as in some
other communities, said Acting Sgt. Dean Duthie, who has spent 13
years as a detective in the Saanich Police Department's drug section.

"Drugs are out there, it is a problem," he said, "but we don't see the
epidemics that are sometimes seen in the larger centres.

"I don't want to give a false impression that there's a
methamphetamine epidemic here and that every kid's going to be on meth."