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