METH RISKY FAD

Crystal meth is the latest - and, perhaps, most deadly - designer-drug fad
among suburban youth.

"It's a huge problem," said RCMP Cpl. Scott Rintoul, "we're on the verge of
an epidemic."

Once a drug whose popularity was largely limited to the gay community and
rave scene, Rintoul said crystal methamphetamine has gone mainstream in the
past couple of years. "It's everywhere," he said, including the Tri-Cities
area.

Known on the street as "ice" or "crystal," the sugar-like powder is usually
sold in Ziploc baggies for $10 and is as addictive as it is inexpensive.
"Much more so than cocaine," said Rintoul, who works for the RCMP's drug
enforcement branch. For a user to become addicted, he said, "it usually
takes a month of occasional use; odds of relapse are 93 per cent."

Crystal meth can be smoked, snorted, injected or ingested. "Right now, most
of the young kids using it are snorting it," Rintoul said. "There's no
other way to describe it than an ugly, ugly drug."

To make matters worse, the drug is readily available. "You can make it
locally," he said. A trip to local the hardware store and pharmacy provides
all the ingredients necessary to cook up crystal meth and there are more
than 300 meth recipes on the Internet to choose from.

The main ingredient in the drug is ephedrine or pseudoephedrine, which
comes from over-the-counter cold and allergy pills or cough medicine.

But though its base materials are easy to come by, cooking them into meth
can be dangerous. Rintoul said if a miscalculation is made while cooking up
the methamphetamine, the process can produce a deadly toxic gas similar to
mustard gas used against troops in World War I. Police have arrived at
clandestine meth labs only to find a roomful of dead bodies, he said. It's
dangerous to use, too. "We're seeing young people dying from this drug
regularly, it's a very dangerous drug," he said.

Crystal meth - a methamphetamine, meaning it is a stimulant, not a
hallucinogenic - first became popular in the late-1960s in a pill form. By
the mid-'70s, the drug had virtually disappeared before making a resurgence
in the United States in the '90s.

But today's strain of crystal meth is much more potent, Rintoul said. "With
crack, you get high for 15 minutes; with this stuff, you can be high for
eight hours," he said, noting that the length of the high depends on the
method of use.

Another frightening trend, he said, is the cheap price of the drug. "The
street price has dropped five dollars in the last six months," Rintoul
said. "It's not a Downtown East Side drug, it's a white, Anglo Saxon,
suburban-type drug."

Billy Weselowski, co-founder of the Innervisions residential drug treatment
centres in Port Coquitlam and Coquitlam, has also witnessed the disturbing
trend of crystal meth abuse among Tri-City teens.

"It's a huge problem with young people," he said. "We have about seven
people being treated for methamphetamine.

"First it was cocaine, then it was crack and it's even more intense with
methamphetamine," Weselowski said.

Over the past 10 years, Randy Adams, supervisor of Share Family Services'
youth addiction services, said the dynamic of drug use in the Tri-Cities
area has changed drastically.

"Typically kids attracted to that sort of lifestyle would find their way
downtown," he said. "That's what is different about our community now -
they can get it right here. People don't have to leave the community."

Added Adams, "The age has gone down. I've heard of and had contact with
11-year-olds who have had serious contact with drugs."

That is not to say, however, that crystal meth abuse is rampant in
Tri-Cities area schools. One Grade 12 student at Port Coquitlam's Riverside
secondary said he has heard of people using the drug but said marijuana and
alcohol are more popular among teens he knows.

"Not many people I know use crystal meth," he said.