A STREET DRUG THAT STEALS YOUNG LIVES

It's Cheap, It's Everywhere, It Lasts For Hours -- And It Does Serious Damage
To The Brain

First of two parts

It's late and in Vancouver General Hospital's parking lot, a kid is sweating,
screaming and banging on the walls in the back of a police wagon.

The officers sit in the front and wait. They're waiting for this kid -- high on
crystal methamphetamines -- to come down. And it may take their whole shift.

They're waiting with the kid because nobody else will. Not the youth crisis
centres. Not the youth detention centres.

Meth addicts are extremely volatile -- more so even than crack cocaine users.
They're violent, paranoid and stronger than normal because of the drug.

The hospitals certainly won't take them because there is only one bed in the
entire Vancouver Coastal Health Authority where someone high on drugs -- any
kind of drugs -- can safely be admitted.

"Right now, we can't get any intoxicated youth into any facility," says
Inspector Dave Jones, whose district includes downtown Vancouver and the
western part of the Downtown Eastside.

Heather Hay, head of addictions programs for the health authority, admits it's
a problem and says the authority is working on a solution. The problem, as
always, is money.

Crystal methamphetamine is the latest and most serious drug problem to hit
Vancouver since the rash of deaths from tainted heroin a few years ago. It has
only begun to show up within the past 18 months or so, even though it's been
slowly moving its way up the I-5 Highway from California for the past of couple
of years.

Hay says that for youth, it is the biggest single issue in the region.

Both Hay and Jennifer Vornbrock, the authority's manager of youth addiction
programs, say they're hearing from youth workers that as many as half of the
700 to 1,000 kids on the street are using crystal meth.

And Vornbrock says the problem isn't going away. "It will only increase
citywide. The impact has not yet been felt."

It's a problem for a whole bunch of reasons, some of which stem from the fact
that it is easily produced and provides a cheap and sustained high.

It's already the drug of choice for street kids. For $10 a hit, they are high
for hours and it's a high that eliminates their two most pressing needs -- food
and shelter. Meth kills hunger and makes it impossible to sleep.

But it's not just street kids who are targeted. It's sold on school yards. It's
almost inevitably laced with ecstasy in the drug cocktails widely sold at raves
and clubs.

It's popular among young, high-tech workers, college students cramming for
exams and young women balancing careers and kids because it gives them extra
energy.

Some young women start out using it because it kills their appetite and gives
them that heroin-chic look, while gay men -- especially those who take the drug
cocktail to control HIV -- use it as an aphrodisiac.

Meth is such a dangerous and debilitating drug that cocaine and heroin are
safer choices, says Dr. Ian Martin, one of the founders of the methamphetamine
response committee set up in January.

The success rate for treatment is a dismal 10 per cent.

Yet statistics indicate that people are abandoning coke and heroin for meth.

Martin -- who works at the Three Bridges Community Health Centre in downtown
Vancouver -- estimates that seven in 10 of the street kids he treats has tried
it or is addicted to it.

Meth is a sneaky killer. It is at least as addictive as heroin and cocaine.
Yet, it's almost impossible to die from an overdose of meth. Meth addicts are
more likely to kill themselves by leaping off bridges than to die from the
direct effects of the drug.

What meth does is produce hallucinations, paranoia and psychosis following an
exquisite high. And it does that by changing the body's adrenaline system.

It activates serotonin production as well as the production of dopamine both
inside and outside the brain cells. Those, in turn, work on the pleasure
centres of the brain, producing the high.

But dopamine produced inside brain cells is toxic to those cells and it kills
them. Outside the cells, the dopamine breaks down in the brain, creating excess
oxygen which circulates through the fatty brain tissues. These excess oxygen
cells are called free radicals and they also kill brain cells.

All these dead brain cells lead to memory loss, a decrease in the ability to
plan even simple things like going to the grocery store and reduced motor
abilities, resulting in symptoms similar to Parkinson's disease.

Martin says researchers are now certain that even very limited use of
methamphetamines kills brain cells. What researchers don't know is whether the
brain can repair or at least compensate for the damage that has occurred once
meth use stops.

He says evidence is now mounting to suggest that crystal meth can not just
bring on schizophrenia in people predisposed to it, but will actually induce it
in others.

Already, researchers have concluded that at least 15 per cent of those who
develop psychosis will never get better and are destined to have permanent and
severe mental problems.

But there's another disturbing question that researchers have just begun work
on, given that the average age of first-time users is 14. What does it do to
the developing brains of children and youth? It is possible that it may be
halting the development of the part of the brain that links cause and effect,
which is crucial for anyone to determine the consequences of their actions.

As meth kills one brain cell at a time, the meth users hallucinate about bugs
crawling on their skin. They pick away at themselves until the worst users are
covered in abscesses and infections.

They are also likely to develop endocartitis, which is an inflammation of the
heart lining, and osteomyliotis, which is an inflammation of the joints.

Because meth affects the pleasure centres of the brain and clouds a user's
judgment, meth users are more likely to have unprotected sex, with resulting
higher rates of HIV infection and sexually transmitted diseases.

"It makes you feel like you're on top of the world but it's followed by a deep
depression," says Dawn McDonald, a reformed addict.

On meth, she heard voices hollering at her. She believed that people were
pursuing her, trying to kill her. Like many meth addicts, McDonald frequently
went on binges to avoid coming down from the high and to avoid that paranoia
and fear.

For up to 10 days at a time, meth addicts will binge -- shooting, smoking,
snorting or swallowing a few grams of the ground white crystals every eight to
10 hours.

Their sense of well-being is so distorted that they don't feel the need to eat
or sleep. It makes it a perfect drug for a young kid on the street who is
terrified of what the night might bring.

Within a few months, the six-foot-tall McDonald had dropped 80 pounds. At 110
pounds, McDonald says, "I was basically starving and I was so dehydrated that
they [police and street workers] were scraping me off the street every couple
of days and sending me to hospital."

Rehydrated, fed and with a few hours of sleep, McDonald would go out and start
over, until one day, in a parking lot, she realized she was going to die unless
she quit.

Remarkably, McDonald, 22, quit cold turkey. She is now enrolled in Covenant
House's Rights of Passage program and is training to be an addictions
counsellor. But when we met, it was early in the morning and she was hanging
out with four friends outside the Street Youth Services office hours before it
opened.

One guy had just finished smoking marijuana. Slowly, he lamented that crystal
meth is now so popular among street kids on the Granville Mall that it's almost
impossible to buy pot. The dealers, he says, have been pushed out by meth
dealers who are mainly kids themselves who deliver the drug on skateboards and
stolen BMX bikes.

Another, Dustin Laxton, had been drug-free for seven days. The 24-year-old said
it proudly but tentatively. He quit to help out McDonald, who has been confined
to a wheelchair.

Soon after she'd quit meth, she was struck by a car when she was crossing the
street. Both her legs were broken.

Laxton quit meth the day the wheelchair-bound McDonald was abandoned by another
meth-using friend. That friend ran off to buy some meth and left her stranded
in the middle of street.

"Crystal meth produces an ugly agitation and agencies are losing compassion for
these kids out of fear... . I've never seen the violence as bad," says Covenant
House's executive director, Sandy Cooke.

In the spring, Covenant House staff made the difficult decision to bar crisis
centre admittance to kids high on meth. The reluctant consensus came after
hours of debate and discussion that followed a night of dealing with four
severely psychotic meth addicts.

They decided that the level of violence put both staff and other kids in the
centre in too much danger.

After nearly 40 years of working with street kids, whom he fondly refers to as
"little rascals," Cooke says he's really worried.

"What it [crystal meth] is doing to them, we don't know. We don't know whether
it brings on permanent psychosis or whether it only brings it on in people
already predisposed. And then withdrawal takes months before people really come
down," says Cooke.

McDonald and her friends figure that about 85 per cent of street kids use meth.

Two years ago, Judy Connors, the intake coordinator for Peak House, says meth
wasn't even mentioned by the 13- to 19-year-olds fortunate enough to have
survived the six-month wait for one of eight beds in the addiction treatment
centre.

Now she says, meth is the third most abused substance after marijuana and
alcohol. Twice as many kids report using meth as cocaine. "Crystal meth is just
everywhere because it's so easy to make," says Connors.

In November 2002, 40 per cent of substance abusers treated at St. Paul's
Hospital psychiatric unit were meth users.

Last year, Pacific Community Resources found that 45 per cent of the 1,936
youth aged 12 to 24 surveyed in six Lower Mainland communities were confident
that they could buy the drug within 24 hours.

Of those, one in five youths said they had tried it and eight per cent said
they had used it in the past month.

In Victoria, the specialized youth detox program reported that crystal meth use
more than tripled to 36 per cent between 2001 and 2002, while heroin use
dropped to 31 per cent from 41 per cent.

A Victoria needle exchange program reported that in the same period, 70 per
cent of its 194 registered clients had tried or were using crystal meth.

The only thing that's surprising about this explosion in use is that Vancouver
and Canada is so unprepared for it.

The World Health Organization says it's the most widely used illicit drug after
cannabis, with an estimated 35 million users worldwide.

The United Nations says there are more meth users worldwide than users of
cocaine and heroin combined.

Part two on Friday.

THE EFFECTS OF CRYSTAL METHAMPHETAMINES

As addictive as heroin and cocaine, this street drug is a lethal mix of
chemicals including acetone, ephedrine, methanol, rubbing alcohol, and red
phosphorus -- the active ingredient in road flares.

PSYCHOLOGICAL

Immediate

*- Produces a high that can last for four hours

*- Restlessness and excitement

*- Panic attacks

Long-Term Use

*- Severe hallucinations, paranoia and psychosis

*- May induce schizophrenia

PHYSICAL

Immediate

*- Enlarged pupils

*- Increased sweating

*- Dry mouth

*- Increased heart rate, breathing and blood pressure

Long-Term Use

*- Brain damage

*- Memory loss and reduced motor abilities, resulting in Parkinson's-like
symptoms

*- Endocartitis, which is an inflammation of the heart lining.

*- Osteomyliotis, which is an inflammation of the joints.