MUNICIPALITIES SEEK HELP FIGHTING DRUGS

Annual meeting of B.C.'s towns, cities addresses growing problem of
crimes associated with drug use

B.C. councillors from villages to cities asked for new tools to fight
drugs and the crime associated with them throughout sessions
Wednesday at the annual meeting of local-government politicians.

Sparwood Mayor David Wilkes suggested B.C. adopt the laws Montana has
put in place, which require hardware stores to keep a record of
people buying materials associated with crystal-meth production.

Coun. Jim Harker of Kamloops said he wants more municipal tools for
shutting down drug houses. Coun. Sushil Thapar of Quesnel asked for
more drug-treatment facilities so that police do more with local drug
users than cycle them in and out of jail.

And delegates unanimously supported resolutions asking for more
federal help in fighting drug trafficking, stiffer penalties for
drug-related offences, regulation of drug paraphernalia sales, more
supportive recovery houses and more regional detox facilities.

The picture that emerged from sessions during the day, which included
one where people shared their strategies for crystal-meth prevention
and another with the province's attorney-general and
solicitor-general, is of cities and towns in every corner of the
province battling with drugs, no matter how small or how remote.

Coun. Rita McKay of Lytton, who is also with the local native band,
said people started noticing drugs creeping into the community in the
last couple of years.

There had always been marijuana and alcohol, she said, "but now the
dealers are mixing marijuana with cocaine and that's how they're
drawing young people into that."

She works on a crystal-meth prevention strategy in Lytton that
involves a lot of school visits and community workshops.

Many councillors were frustrated with the apparent lack of
consequences for drug crimes. In Terrace, Coun. Rich McDaniel said a
meth lab was busted almost next door to the police station and those
charged were put on probation.

Attorney-General Wally Oppal said one promising experiment that may
help with some of these crime- and drug-related problems is the
community-court model now being piloted in Vancouver.

He said community courts help bring together people from different
parts of the system who have traditionally operated in isolation to
create real solutions.

That allows the community court to deal with "the root causes of
crime, the street-level crime that is upsetting to all of us."

But when Oak Bay Coun. Nils Jensen, a prosecutor, asked when
community courts might be put into other communities, Oppal did not
offer a definitive answer.

He said he hopes the Vancouver community court becomes permanent, but
said that with other communities, his ministry would work with cities
and courts to do "a lot of other things."