THE REAL COWBOY JUNKIES

Known For Its Hockey Players And Wranglers, Central Alberta Now Produces A
New Export: Drug Addicts

RED DEER, Alta. - The cellphone bleats and Buck Wells eases the ageing
motorhome on to Gaetz Avenue, heading for a low-rise tenement neighbourhood
in downtown Red Deer. Another junkie beckons, and she has scores of needles
to trade.

For Mr. Wells, operator of what was until recently a mobile soup kitchen,
this is the new reality of Central Alberta: The country once known for
producing cowboys, hockey players and high-grade petroleum has a growing
drug problem, and at this stage is ill-equipped to deal with it.

"We started out just taking clothes and blankets and things for the
homeless," says Mr. Wells, a 59-year-old former country singer who now
volunteers his time. "Then we agreed to do the needle exchange and that
just took right off, too.... There's no methadone clinic and no detox
centre in Red Deer, so right now, we're all they've got."

Mr. Wells, who began driving the Helping Hands van last October, is a
front-line witness to an unexpected side effect of Alberta's steady
urbanization and spectacular population growth.

In the last two years, AIDS prevention workers here have seen demand for
clean needles rise from about 2,000 per month to 8,000, suggesting a
dramatic rise in usage. In October -- before Mr. Wells began taking their
needles with him on rounds -- they supplied an all-time high of 10,000.

How many addicts are living in the region is anyone's guess, but local
health workers fear the number is far greater than the roughly 160 who make
frequent use of the city's exchange service.

"It's unbelievable, and we're pretty certain it has to do with economics,"
says Phil Rauch, executive director of the Central Alberta AIDS Network, a
government-funded agency whose needles Mr. Wells helps distribute.

"There was a time when we thought 2,000 was a lot of needles to go through
in a month. Then we went up to 5,000 and then 8,000. And we're only seeing
the ones who know the service is available."

Mr. Rauch believes a combination of factors has contributed to the spike,
noting that it came long after his agency first made clean needles available.

Availability of product is one factor: Located on the corridor between
Edmonton and Calgary, Red Deer is convenient to distributors of heroin and
cocaine that arrives via those two cities from Vancouver and overseas. To
complicate matters further, addicts have been obtaining morphine
prescriptions by claiming they are trying to quit. The result has been a
mini-market in morphine.

Sudden urban growth is also contributing. Red Deer is one of a group of
Highway 2 communities that saw significant expansion through the late
1990s. The recent federal census found the region's population increased by
12% to about 2.1 million between 1996 and 2001, with Red Deer gaining more
than 7,600 residents.

So quickly are some cities growing that location is becoming irrelevant.
Major centres outside the central corridor are experiencing problems, too,
though they have few indicators with which to measure them.

Police and health officials in fast-growing Fort McMurray have encouraged
the Wood Buffalo HIV and AIDS Society to consider an exchange after RCMP
last year turned up large needle caches and evidence of widespread cocaine
abuse.

"It's kept so hidden in Fort McMurray," adds Lyn Gorman, the society's
executive director. "There's so much wealth and pride in the community, I
don't think people want to think of it as a city filled with dope."

Combine the migration to cities with a roaring regional economy and you
have a recipe for trouble, says Mr. Rauch.

Many of Red Deer's drug users are young people who have left their homes
and families behind to find work, but are unable to cope with their
newfound freedom. "If they get a little off track with their partying,
there's nobody like a mother or father or close friend to pull them back,"
he says.

Janice, the 21-year-old heroin user who contacts Mr. Wells on this night,
is a case in point. She used nothing much stronger than marijuana while
growing up in Sylvan Lake, a resort and farming town located about 30
kilometres west of Red Deer. But she developed a heroin dependency after
moving to the city, where she now stays to ensure a steady supply.

"People like their morphine, but me, I like my heroin," she rasps between
puffs on a cigarette. "Cocaine is really easy to find, so that's what a lot
of people are doing."

Seated in the motorhome, she could be a walking anti-drug advertisement.
She clutches a paper bag containing 60 new needles and two elastic arm
bands -- "rigs" that Janice expects to last her and a fellow addict several
days.

Poor eating and the ravages of hepatitis C, which she contracted from a
dirty needle more than a year ago, have reduced her tall frame to a thin
line. Her wide blue eyes are surrounded by fields of darkness, and she
starts at sudden movements.

But she has plenty to say about the drug-using community, warning that
exchange services see little of the activity she does.

"People are hiding out. A lot of them shoplift to pay for their products
and, believe me, they're not being careful. I've got a friend -- this
girl's a very messy junkie -- who would use anybody's needle.

"One time she begged me for four hours to give her one of my used ones
because she didn't have any."

The challenge, say Mr. Rauch and others, is to act before such behaviour
produces an explosion in infection rates. While community awareness of the
problem is growing, some residents and politicians resist the notion that a
tidy, mid-sized city such as Red Deer could have a big-time drug problem.
Needle exchanges and proposals for safe injection sites receive little
public support.

Mr. Wells's service itself may be halted by the province's recent decision
to eliminate local boards that distribute lottery proceeds: Money that
helped get the motorhome on the road is headed into general revenue, and
the service has not yet heard whether its grant will be available. And
there's no guarantee money is the solution.

"A lot of people moved to this city because of its small-town feel," says
Mr. Rauch. "I can understand them not wanting to let go of the myth, but
the community's changing and eventually we're going to have to face up to it."