DRUG DEALERS THRIVE DESPITE ADDED HEAT

Now that we've decided to treat drug addiction like a real illness, how
about treating drug dealing like a real crime?

Just something to think about as the same old faces show up selling the
same old drugs in the same old places downtown.

"Douglas Street is kind of a shopping mall," says Sgt. Darren Laur of the
Victoria Police. Marijuana is sold in Centennial Square, heroin and cocaine
around the Douglas Hotel, methamphetamines farther south. Notions and
ladies fashions are on the fourth floor. Thank you for shopping at DrugCo.

Police bust dealers, who go away for a little while, then reappear, ready
to repeat the process. Kind of like the wolf and the sheepdog in the old
Bugs Bunny cartoon, punching the same timeclock every morning before
fighting over the flock. "Morning, Ralph." "Morning, Sam."

There are a few more sheepdogs around Victoria these days, the number of
bikes-and-beat cops having increased Jan. 1. The effect was immediate. In
an eight-day period, 46 people were charged with drug offences in downtown
- -- 29 with possession, 13 with dealing, four with possession for the
purpose of trafficking. But don't expect the heat on Douglas Street to
result in much more than a change of location. That's all that happened a
few years ago when the injection-drug action at Yates and Broad became too
public.

It's not as though the dealers arrested this month -- most of them for
selling cocaine -- hadn't been seen before.

"Of those charged with possession, I would say three-quarters were people
who we haven't dealt with before," said Laur.

"Of the 13 traffickers we arrested, it would be the exact opposite." The
four charged with possession-for-the-purpose were all known to police, too.

"I've arrested the same guys two or three times for dealing downtown," says
Laur. "If they're doing jail time, they're not doing long jail time."

Someone caught selling cocaine or heroin by the gram isn't likely to get
locked up for a first offence. Laur knows of one guy who was recently
busted for his fifth or sixth time. He'll probably get a 90-day sentence,
of which he will serve one-third. "He'll probably do 30 days and then he'll
be out."

That's in line with the findings of Vancouver police constable Gerry
Wickstead, who has spent thousands of hours compiling crime statistics. He
says that of 7,742 drug-trafficking cases studied by Statistics Canada in
1999-2000, the average sentence was 90 days.

In B.C., adults were charged with selling or importing drugs 5,922 times in
2000, yet only 63 dealers did federal time, meaning only about one per cent
of the charges resulted in a sentence of two years or more. Nationally, the
figure was 3.3 per cent.

The federal government compiles its own statistics. It found that 64 per
cent of the adults convicted of drug dealing in 1996-97 went to jail. Four
years later, the percentage had dropped to 49 per cent.

All this hasn't escaped the notice of the U.S., where three years ago the
state department ripped Canadian courts for their leniency. That brought a
sharp rebuke from Robert Metzger, chief judge of the B.C. Provincial Court.

"I want to say to them, 'Don't talk to me about how to get rid of a drug
problem. You hand out long sentences and your jails are full of people, but
your problem isn't going away,'" he told the Vancouver Sun. "If I want to
listen to anybody, it would be a country that doesn't have a drug problem,
and that has solved their drug problem.''

Maybe Metzger is right, and long sentences will do nothing to win the war
on drugs. The flow of narcotics is unstoppable. Jail one drug dealer and
another will fill the vacuum.

But that still doesn't mean trafficking is OK. When you look at the
miserable, desperate lives of Victoria's addicts, it's hard to sympathize
with those who feed the addiction, particularly when the dealers themselves
are acting solely out of greed. "Of the traffickers that we deal with in
the downtown core, the vast majority are not heavy drug users," says Laur.
Those who sell addictive drugs are, like pimps, human parasites.

But don't go looking for things to change. Judges who stray beyond the
normal sentencing grid will have their decisions booted on appeal.

There is little political will, either. Putting people in jail is
expensive, as is monitoring them after they're out. The provincial
government has budgeted for a drop in the number of prisoners. Wickstead
notes that the number of trafficking charges each year outstrips the total
capacity of B.C.'s prisons.

All of which adds up to more frustration for the police, though few will
engage in public judge-or politician-bashing. "I just do my job," says
Laur. It's the standard line delivered by police, usually followed by the
sound of a cop bashing his head against a wall.