DOWNTOWN EASTSIDE IS A DRUG WAREHOUSE, POLICE SAY

Vancouver's open-air drug market on the Downtown Eastside has worsened over
the past year with more addicts, more drugs, and more open use on the
street than ever before, says a Vancouver city police officer.

Sergeant Mark Horsley, who led a recent crackdown on drug traffickers, said
the neighbourhood is now in crisis with an infrastructure that supports
drug addicts with needle "giveaway programs," but fails to provide them
with any treatment or prevention services.

"At what point do we say we're in a crisis and we need to intervene?" he asked.

Horsley said a recent joint forces buy-and-bust project arrested 119 people
- -- three of them twice -- seized six loaded, unregistered handguns, and
resulted in 191 criminal charges over 12 days.

Of those arrests, 44 were made outside the Carnegie Centre at Main and
Hastings in the heart of the Downtown Eastside.

But if the numbers were disturbing, Horsley said the circumstances of some
of the arrests were even more alarming.

He said undercover officers trying to buy drugs were offered free needles
with their purchases in an attempt by dealers to encourage intravenous drug
use.

Horsley said he watched a guy sell a rock of cocaine to a "kid who couldn't
have been more than 15."

And he said investigators determined the Downtown Eastside has become a
drug warehouse, supplying drugs at wholesale prices to "retail" dealers who
then distribute them to neighbourhoods throughout the Lower Mainland,
including at least one high school.

"They're doing a very good job and they're marketing their product and it's
really much farther into the community than just the Downtown Eastside."

As a result, the buy-and-bust project included investigators from the
Organized Crime Agency as well as the Surrey and Coquitlam RCMP, which have
recognized the impact of the Downtown Eastside drug market on their
neighbourhoods, Horsley said.

John Turvey, who oversees the Downtown Eastside needle exchange that
distributed 3.4 million syringes last year, acknowledged the desperate need
for more treatment and detox facilities. He also agreed that the drug
trafficking problem has expanded dramatically over the years.

"But historically, along with the absence of a lot of treatment facilities,
has been the absence of just meat-and-potatoes law enforcement," he said.
"It hasn't been adequate."

He also objected to Horsley characterizing the needle exchange as a
"giveaway" since, he says, the program recovers more than 100 per cent of
the needles it distributes.

"So it's not a giveaway, and that's a misleading statement," he said. Harm
reduction programs like the needle exchange have as important a role to
play as treatment and detox, he said. "We all have a role in the continuum
of care. . . . One only enhances the other."

Michael Clague, executive director of the Carnegie Centre, also defended
needle exchange programs. "Our experience is that people who are addicts go
to where the drugs are, and whether or not there are needles and clean
water and the rest of it available, is purely incidental to the need to get
drugs.

"The point is, if the free needles weren't there, people would be using
dirty needles and the diseases associated with that would be spreading even
more than they are now."

But Clague said the police are in a difficult position, trying to enforce
the law, while waiting for the arrival of other components in Vancouver's
four-pillar drug strategy, which calls for treatment, harm reduction and
prevention -- as well as policing.

"We hope it's on it's way," Clague said. "But there's no doubt that
everybody -- including the police -- are working with one hand tied and,
therefore, their actions cannot really be successful until these other
services are in place."

In the meantime, Horsley said drug dealers are refining their own
strategies for getting more people hooked on drugs.

The traffickers now package all their products -- cocaine, heroin or
marijuana -- in $10 amounts so that they're easily affordable to anyone,
including children, he said. And what the dealers lose by offering low,
introductory prices, they make up later in volume of sales once the buyer
gets addicted.

"I think most people think a street trafficker is making just a few bucks
to support his habit, and that's really not the case," Horsley said.

Police say drug trafficking has become so profitable that some dealers make
up to $5,000 a day, while paying "employees" $50 or five rocks of crack,
whichever they prefer, to do counter-surveillance on the police.

Horsley said he doesn't for a minute believe that police enforcement alone
will solve the problem. He supports drug treatment, drug education, drug
courts and proper care for the mentally ill, many of whom become easy prey
for drug dealers.

But in the absence of any of these services, Horsley said law-abiding
people still have the right to feel safe on the streets.

"They have the right to walk down the street without being offered a rock
of cocaine or fearing that their child can spend their allowance becoming
addicted to an illicit substance," he said.

"I'm just a cop. I do enforcement. I try to change behaviour by being there
and arresting people. It's not enough. But at least we're trying."

Horsley said one of the key components of the buy-and-bust project will be
follow-up research to track the jail sentences and bail conditions handed
each of the accused.

Police will also be working with welfare fraud investigators to identity
people collecting social assistance, while earning money as drug traffickers.