CITY DRUG SQUAD HITS DOWNTOWN SUPPLIERS

The Vancouver police drug squad has busted a ring they say was supplying
drugs to Vancouver's Granville Street nightclub scene -- the first of many
drug busts aimed at suppliers, Vancouver's top drug cop promises.

The ring operated out of the Dufferin Hotel, a popular Vancouver gay bar,
and was supplying street-level dealers as well as nightclubs with cocaine
and ecstasy, says Vancouver vice and drug squads' Insp. Kash Heed.

"We got information that this group was trafficking in the clubs and bars
and we put in some undercover operatives," said Heed, who took over the
drug and vice squads last year.

Two men face drug-trafficking charges after a raid on a West End apartment.

Heed says police are in the process of cracking down on those supplying
drugs to what he calls "Vancouver's open air drug market -- the worst in
the country."

B.C. has about 20,000 drug addicts, including 15,000 who use crack and
intravenous heroin and cocaine, and 5,000 crack addicts who don't inject.

Approximately 5,000 addicts live in the Downtown Eastside, although many
more come t o the area to score drugs to sell back home, Heed said.

The drug squad, which used to be a combined RCMP and Vancouver operation,
was sidetracked going after drugs that were not going downtown, he said.

"That is now our focus. We will be targeting drug rings that are supplying
the drugs to the street."

He praised the city's drug strategy and new drug court, which is diverting
addicts into treatment rather than jail.

Major players in the Downtown Eastside had praise for Heed too.

"I have a lot of time for Kash Heed," said John Turvey, who runs the
Downtown Eastside Youth Association and the needle exchange.

"We haven't had effective drug enforcement in the city for 10 years," he
said. "What was touted as tolerance was a licence for dealers to operate
openly. It turned the downtown Eastside into a containment ghetto for
drugs. I welcome some basic meat-and-potatoes drug enforcement."

Heed was part of a project to clean up Vancouver's skid row area in the
early 1990s that fell by the wayside as the police department tried to
grapple with other problems, including turmoil within the department.

Difficult for police was the trend to treat drug addiction as a social and
medical problem -- the harm reduction model.

"I believe in harm reduction, but you can't have harm reduction without
strong law enforcement," Heed said. "You have to reduce the supply of drugs
as well as working on prevention and treatment."

Heed said that in about 1994, police began to hassle drug dealers in areas
such as Strathcona, moving the drug problem to Hastings and Main.

"We ended up with an infrastructure that supported theft," Heed said of the
pawnshops that sprang up as the drug problem grew.