DRUG-TORN FAMILY SEEKS LAW REFORM

Crack, Cocaine And Heroin Are Delivered All Over The
City

Canadian senators sat spellbound yesterday as the handsome scion of an
affluent family told how he became addicted in high school to heroin
and cocaine that were easy to buy in his Kerrisdale
neighbourhood.

With his mother Nichola at his side, 21-year-old Ross Hall told a
Senate committee reviewing drug laws that he's now on methadone
maintenance and hasn't used cocaine for two weeks.

Without the support of his parents, with whom he now lives, "I'd have
no hope. I'd be a goner," said Hall. "There is nothing for children or
teenagers using hard-core drugs who want to kick it and get their
lives back."

Ross's older brother is also recovering from heroin
addiction.

"Any parent knows how hard it is to separate a teen from what they
want to do," said Nichola Hall, speaking for a parents' group called
From Grief to Action.

"I and my husband and most members of our group feel they gave their
children as good an upbringing as possible, but if I can look at any
cause of what happened to my sons, it is perhaps because I was so
opposed to drugs that they had to keep it secret from me.

"It prevented open discussion and the disclosure early on of their
drug use that might have prevented hard-core addiction."

Despite her sons' battles with addiction, she urged the committee to
decriminalize marijuana possession.

"Alcohol is more regulated and controlled and therefore harder for
young people to get than marijuana and we also feel decriminalization
of marijuana would separate the users of pot from the pushers of hard
drugs," said Nichola.

Ross said he began buying marijuana in Grade 8 at his west-side
private school.

"It's far easier for a child to get marijuana than wait outside the
liquor store to get alcohol," Ross told the committee, headed by Sen.
Pierre-Claude Nolin, which is holding hearings across Canada.
"Marijuana is being sold in all schools and the same dealer in most
cases will eventually offer you heroin or cocaine."

Asked how he got hooked on hard drugs, Ross replied: "The apathy and
demoralization caused by marijuana helped break down the psychological
barriers I had toward hard drugs. My brother was using by then and
offered me heroin."

Hall said crack, cocaine and heroin are delivered all over the city
and that most teens begin hard-core addiction by smoking heroin. "I'd
say at about one in five west-side high school parties, there will be
some people smoking crack or heroin. It's common."

Once addicted, Ross was expelled from high school and left home,
turning to panhandling and petty crime to finance drug use.

He said methadone maintenance now takes care of his craving for
heroin, but not cocaine: "I can taste it and I start to sweat.

"Only by sheer determination, by writing out on paper what the drug is
telling me, and then using logic to think about the physical,
emotional, social and spiritual harm the drugs cause, can I come to a
rational decision not to use."

Ross told the senators he favours decriminalizing marijuana, "so its
use can be controlled and regulated and it's not being provided by a
drug pusher," and making heroin and cocaine available to addicts at
pharmacies and clinics.

Nichola also deplored the dearth of treatment facilities for addicts,
noting that Vancouver's two government-run detox centres have long
waiting lists and "are useless to young heroin and cocaine addicts."

There is an "extremely expensive" private detox centre, said Hall,
but, "they kick people out halfway through if they think they won't
make it, because it's bad for the centre's statistics."

Ross said he hopes to be off methadone and drug-free within a year,
then resume his studies.

"We're not worthless junkies, or criminals," he said. "We're people
with a disease who need help from the health system."