CRACK USE SKYROCKETS

Police Call Influx of Dealers 'Dangerous'

John White knows the horrors crack cocaine can wield, such as the
time -- in a fit of drug-induced rage -- he broke both arms when he
purposely blasted through a second-storey windowpane.

"I jumped out the window to get in a fight," the 44-year-old Hamilton
man recalled Friday at a conference in Windsor called Cracked!
Cocaine In Our Community. "I was very high. Probably had about an
eight-ball (3.5 grams of crack, worth about $250) in me at the time.
I felt like nobody could hurt me. What do you mean you're calling me
names? So I stepped back and ran right through the living room and
smashed through the plate glass window. The next thing I hit was the street."

The hospitalization didn't stop his crack habit, however. Neither did
the time he took a crowbar to the face in a bar fight and temporarily
lost all vital signs.

But two years ago the man who says he has been an addict since age
13, starting with acid and pills before injecting and smoking crack,
finally decided to stop killing himself.

"Enough was enough," said White, in Windsor to urge the community to
create a local Cocaine Anonymous chapter like the one he considers
his lifeline in Hamilton.

"I got tired of living like an animal. I would do anything for drugs:
break-and-enters, robbery, fraud, begging and stealing from family.
I've gotten hepatitis C from the use of drugs and I know that it's
eventually going to take my life."

A variety of speakers at the Cracked! conference at the Hospice of
Windsor, which attracted an overflow crowd of 115 from more than a
dozen agencies, reinforced a disturbing trend: Windsor has a growing
crack problem.

"We've been experiencing an incredible failure in terms of people
going back to jail because of the disease called crack cocaine," said
Skip Graham, executive director of St. Leonard's halfway house, which
sponsored the daylong Cracked! seminar. "Ninety per cent of the
suspensions in our program are directly related to testing positive
for crack cocaine."

Crack is a highly addictive stimulant derived from powdered cocaine.
Users "freebase" cocaine by dissolving and then boiling it in baking
soda till it forms lumps or rocks, then smoke it in a pipe.

According to the Canadian Addiction Survey, said federal prosecutor
Richard Pollack, rates of lifetime use of powdered and crack cocaine
in Canada almost tripled between 1994 and 2004. The amount of cocaine
seized by law enforcement officials increased more than 40 per cent
between 2003 and 2004.

Although Windsor statistics weren't provided at Cracked!, anecdotal
evidence suggests it's particularly bad locally -- including a rise
in guns and related crime.

"There's definitely been an increase in crack cocaine and an increase
in more dealers coming to the city," said Sgt. Mike Ducharme, of the
Windsor police drug enforcement branch, who suspects the influx stems
from the Toronto area.

"There are also more aggressive dealers, with firearms and so forth.
It's dangerous."

IF YOU NEED HELP

Numbers to call:

Withdrawal Management Services: (519)257-5225

Narcotics Anonymous: (519)256-9975, (519)999-1234

Drug and Alcohol Registry of Treatment: 1-800-565-8603