NEW DRUG OF CHOICE A CRISIS COMING TO A HEAD

Crystal Methamphetamine Is Changing Everything We've Come to Think Of
As True-Isms About Drugs and Dealing

At first when you hear people talking about the crystal
methamphetamine crisis, you can't help but think of Reefer Madness,
the 1938 propaganda film about the evils of marijuana.

It sounds too bad to be true. But I asked some strangely reliable
sources -- two young women in their 20s who have spent most of the
past decade on the street.

The first was desperate for some crack cocaine. It was about 7 a.m.
She hadn't slept and was dirty, twitching and fiddling with a little
change purse. She was so desperate for crack that she didn't seem to
recognize the ludicrousness of asking Constable George Wong (the
police officer I was with) if he had some rock.

Had she ever used meth. Not a chance, she said. "Too
dangerous."

The second was sleeping in a back alley. Scarcely able to stand
because of some drug she denied having taken, she said she tried meth
but would never do it again. It made her crazy, she said. It made her
teeth rot and fall out.

Crystal meth -- jib, cryssie, speed or ice as it's called on the
street -- is changing everything we've come to think of as true-isms
about drugs, addiction, dealing, detox and rehab. Although this drug
has its roots in the "speed" of the 1960s, experts say this isn't your
parents' speed.

The short story of meth is this. It's now the drug of choice for
street kids and rave-goers, although rave-goers are often unaware that
most ecstacy and other club drugs are laced with it.

It is at least as addictive as heroin and cocaine. It is cheaper, has
a longer high. It has aphrodisiac qualities, which make it a common
ingredient in almost all party and rave drugs. Meth is completely
artificial and about 90 per cent of it is solvents. Not only does it
kill brain cells, but the body is unable to break it down. It induces
a schizophrenic psychosis that researchers believe may be permanent.
It makes frequent users so violent and paranoid that they often can't
recognize friends and will lash out at anyone.

Detox can take weeks and even months, not days as with other drugs.
The rehab success rate is dreadful -- 10 per cent or less -- because
the addiction is so powerful and the physical damage so severe.

Nobody is really sure how to treat the meth-induced psychosis. Some
anti-psychotic drugs work, but even that is hit-and-miss, says Dr. Ian
Martin at Three Bridges Clinic, which provides health services to kids
living on the street in downtown Vancouver.

Meth is cheap to make and the ingredients are nothing more mysterious
than some items you can pick up at local drug and hardware stores. The
recipes for cooking it are readily available on the Internet. And
because it doesn't require any sophisticated supply lines across
borders, the local supplier could be that seemingly nice family next
door.

Surprisingly, the arrival of crystal meth in Vancouver seems to have
caught people off guard and stymied everybody from street youth
workers to the police to health-care workers. Nobody really knows how
to cope with it.

It's surprising, since meth is definitely not a homegrown problem. The
World Health Organization estimates there are more than 35 million
users worldwide, making it the most widely used illicit drug after
cannabis. The United Nations says there are more meth users worldwide
than users of cocaine and heroin combined.

It's such a terrible drug that the kids who are surviving on the
street advise others to use marijuana or even crack rather than meth.
Some street kids even told me that they long for the days when pot was
easier to get than meth, because they're losing too many friends to
this drug.

Youth crisis centres have locked their doors to kids high on meth.
There is only one hospital bed in all of Vancouver where youths high
on drugs can be safely admitted, at St. Paul's Hospital, but it's
usually full. That leaves it to the police to keep these sweating,
twitching, violent youths safe. The only solution Inspector Dave Jones
has come up with is to put these kids in the back of paddy wagons and
park them in the lots outside Vancouver General Hospital in case
something goes wrong. Then the officers often wait out their shifts as
babysitters to these paranoid, hallucinating, dangerous kids.

Because nobody really knows how long detox and rehab take and because
there are no highly successful ways to either detox or deal with the
addiction, none of the usual programs is all that effective.

But because there is growing evidence that the effects of meth are
permanent, many people are now seriously contemplating what it might
mean to have hundreds or thousands of drug-induced psychotics. Just
imagine what kind of strain that could put on our currently
over-burdened mental health system.

Once again, sadly, Vancouver is leading the way with crystal meth.
Meth use here is more widespread than anywhere else in Canada. But
other places are quickly catching up. Peak House -- one of the only
youth addiction treatment centres in B.C. -- says meth is now third
after marijuana and alcohol among the drugs used by kids from all over
B.C.

It may require a homegrown solution, says Ida Goodreau, chief
executive of the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority. The health
consequences are so horrendous, she says, that we can't wait for
others to find a way to fix the problem.

It will mean putting money into research to determine just how the
drug works and what damage it does. Only then can scientists start to
come up with treatments.

Meantime, educators and parents need to get all the information they
can. And what it may mean is that we have to be more truthful and
sophisticated when we talk to kids about illegal drugs. What we need
to start doing is telling them that not all illegal drugs are the same.

We need to enlist street survivors to spread the message to kids that
if you must experiment with drugs, don't choose meth.

And we need to get the police out of hospital parking lots and back on
to the streets, so they can figure out how to track down the producers
and dealers of this poison.