KINDERSLEY IS BOOMING, BUT SO IS THE DRUG TRADE

KINDERSLEY - Mayor John Boquist and his councillors gathered for a
meeting July 14 with an RCMP officer, the high school principal and
an addictions worker.

At this meeting, the subject was not street cleaning, park
maintenance or property tax.

"We were updating them on the drug situation here. The problem is
growing. It's in every community in the area," Staff Sgt. Wally Lynds said.

Cocaine and other serious drugs have gained a foothold in this town
of 5,000, with growing numbers of their high school students
classified as regular users, they told the assembled councillors.

The health region and other agencies hope the launch of a new drug
strategy will stem the tide.

"It's much more serious than we thought," Lynds said. "It's going to
get worse if we don't address it."

By most measures, Kindersley is thriving. Spacious, two-storey homes
are under construction. Large, new trucks are parked everywhere. Help
wanted signs are posted on the doors of the fast food restaurants. On
a recent weeknight, seven of the town's hotels were booked solid.

The oil and gas boom in Saskatchewan is flooding towns like
Kindersley, Weyburn and Lloydminster with money. But there's a downside.

Dozens of new workers, mostly young men, are drawn to the promise of
quick, big money. At one restaurant table, there's a young man from
Rocanville and another from Moose Jaw. On a servicing rig north of
town, there's a local guy, but also crew members from Unity, Calgary,
Thunder Bay and France.

They perform tough, at times dangerous, work with long hours, but the
pay is good. There are few other jobs that pay someone with no
post-secondary education as much as $100,000 a year.

There are also spinoff revenues for countless businesses. The result?
Large numbers of workers and young Kindersley residents with money to burn.

"We work hard and we play hard," several workers said when interviewed.

Lynds and Nicole Morheart, the clinical supervisor of addictions for
the Heartland Health Region, agree the drug problem is getting worse.

"In the oilpatch, there's a lot of money floating around," Morheart said.

"Anywhere there's large amounts of money, there will be substance abuse."

Enforcement is one solution, but there have been only a handful of
drug charges laid in the Kindersley area in the past couple of years.
Lynds said the statistics "do not reflect the scope of the problem."

RCMP resources are stretched so thin that time-consuming drug
investigations must often take a back seat to their daily work.

"We can't do the work that should be done," he said.

The consequences of this growing drug culture are also evident on the
oil and gas rigs, said nurse Arlene Jorgenson.

Jorgenson owns Healthserv, an occupational health consulting company
which conducts more than 1,000 drug tests for oil and gas employers
every month.

Workers are often required to pass a drug test before they are hired,
but Jorgenson's company is also brought onto work sites to conduct
random tests.

She said skilled and older workers usually pass the screening tests,
but drug use among young, new workers is on the rise. One young man
who was intoxicated on the job recently crushed his hand and required
surgery, she said. She's even caught oil rig managers on the job high
on cocaine, she said.

"The use of marijuana and cocaine is up remarkably," she said.

Crystal meth, a potent drug which has garnered loads of publicity in
recent years, is not prevalent among the workers because meth addicts
can't hold a job, she said.

Lynds and Morheart realize enforcement alone will not solve the drug
problem in the oilpatch. That's why they and others have created the
Drug and Alcohol Awareness Network (DAWN).

Health, school and church officials, the police and other agencies
have put their heads together "to make a difference in the
community," Morheart said.

Through meetings and other forums, they'll see what Kindersley and
other towns need to tackle the drug problem. It might be better
treatment or education programs. But it also might be a youth centre
or other indirect measures.

And most of all, parents and community members must all take
responsibility for addressing the problem before it gets worse.

"It's slow going, but we're hopeful for the future," Morheart said.

The mayor agreed. "The drugs are a problem, that's for sure - part
and parcel of the economic activity," Boquist said.

"But we're trying to do something. We're not putting our head in the sand."