BATTLING ADDICTION: THE FIGHT FOR CONTROL

Police Say Crack Cocaine And Heroin Plague The Streets Of Powell
River. The Peak Follows A Drug User's Spiralling Social Descent

Part of that day still feels like a doctor's appointment. The motion
sensor moans, a lady hurries to the window and I state my business. I
wait in a foyer and rifle through some pamphlets. An old man walks in
and sits down with a grunt. After a time, a door opens and someone
calls my name. I am told to wait in another, smaller room. Finally, a
man in a uniform knocks and enters. He asks me a series of questions.
I fire back with ones of my own and he consults his files. He digs
around in a bag and takes out some drugs. I count nine spitballs of
crack cocaine, three spitballs of powder cocaine and a handful of
morphine capsules.

Corporal Dennis Blanch, the man in charge of the general
investigation section and municipal drug enforcement unit at the
Powell River RCMP detachment, tells me John Smith (real name
withheld), an addict police arrested a week ago for trafficking, had
the drugs secreted in his anus. According to local police, cocaine
and heroin are by far the most prevalent drugs in the area. Coupled
with several counts of breached probation, these drugs just earned
Smith 15 months in prison. I am told he flies out today. You mean
he's here, I say. Can I see him?

Minutes later, a sick-looking Smith shuffles into the room, clad in a
t-shirt, baggy jeans and white socks. I assure Blanch I'll be fine
and he leaves the room.

"You look like hell," I tell Smith, hoping to break the ice.

"I was doing two grams of heroin a day until last week," he replies.

Hundreds of questions run through my mind, but I choose to voice a
simple why. He studies the card I gave him just after we shook hands
and begins to tell me his story.

He was 15 and good with electronics when drugs entered his life. He
installed a car stereo for a man who couldn't pay him for the job.
Instead, he gave him cocaine.

"I didn't want to do it. I was scared of it," says Smith.

But, enterprising, he accepted it, thinking he could make some money
selling it off in portions. That was 1997. He did make some money and
was lured back by the dollar. A week later, he was running drugs for
an older dealer, getting $10 for every $50 he sold.

"Eventually, I thought, 'Forget keeping the $10, I'll do a rail."

Smith soon dropped out of school, moved in with the dealer and became
a full-time drug runner.

"One day, we were sitting around and ran out of coke," he tells me.
The dealer then whipped out a bag of heroin and things spiraled out of control.

"Next thing you know, I've got two drug habits. I'm doing heroin, I'm
doing coke and I'm 16."

I ask about needles and Smith shows me his clean forearms. He tells
me he can barely sit through vaccinations.

By 2001, he was addicted, sick and paranoid to the point of carrying
a pistol. He moved to Lund and decided to quit. "I didn't know what
to do to come off," he says. "I lay in bed, drank soup, ate crackers
and smoked pot."

He spent several days bouncing between being feverish, soaked in
sweat and freezing cold, but kicked the habit. He was suddenly sober,
but also uneducated and unemployed. "Since I was basically just
supporting my habit before, I thought there was money to be made in dealing."

Before long, he was arrested for trafficking. "It was my first ever
criminal offence," he tells me. "I was scared to go to jail. Crown
counsel wanted nine months. I ended up serving six."

Before that happened, he was released on a promise to appear. "I
couldn't deal because I was busted, but I had all this dope left. So,
I started using it."

He was using heroin everyday by the time he first went to jail. I ask
him about the detox and rehab programs offered in jail, but he
dismisses their effectiveness. "I did all the programs in jail:
substance management, violence prevention, harm reduction," he says.
"But how is that going to help anybody when I can make a phone call
and get half an ounce of heroin thrown over the fence?"

His tale continued to the present, filled with moments of clarity and
decisions to clean up alongside moments of weakness and decisions to
reach for the drugs. "Come December 2005, I was hooked for the third
time in my life," Smith tells me. "It's Christmas morning and I'm in
my house smoking heroin."

Just then, the door opens and the interview is over. "I can't tell
you what I need because I don't know," he tells me, fighting back
tears as he's escorted out of the room. "I don't want to be a junkie
all my life. But now I'm going to jail and I'll be all alone."

The system we have now is not an ideal system, but it's the only
system we have, Blanch tells me when I see him again. "Because it's a
disease of relapse, people are going to slip and fall when they're in
a recovery state. But if someone is willing to show they are making
an effort to change, I'm willing to go to bat for them and vouch for
their credibility."

In the meantime, public interest is Blanch's first priority and Smith
is going to jail. "It's giving the community a reprieve from his
current criminal behaviour. At the same time, there are programs
available that will give him a push toward recovery."

Melanie Johnson, a mental health and addictions clinician at Powell
River Mental Health and Addiction Services, agrees. "There are some
great addictions support programs in jail, but people must choose to
go to them."

Those looking to stop using drugs in Powell River have a good support
system, says Johnson. Access to medical detox in Vancouver is free.
There is also a female social detox bed in town at Grace House, a
male social detox bed in Comox and numerous residential addictions
treatment centres throughout the province.

"Nobody is ever turned away due to lack of funds," she tells me.
"Seeing us is free and we make referrals for free and get them into
places for free."

Johnson admitted users must sometimes wait a week or so for the beds
to become available, but stressed the problem of congestion is not as
severe as that of other communities in the province.

Mental Health and Addictions is on the third floor of Powell River
General Hospital, at 5000 Joyce Avenue. For more information readers
can call 604.485.3300.