DEATH BRINGS CALL FOR DRUG TESTING

An RCMP Officer Is Alleged To Have Had Health Problems

The RCMP should set an example and submit its members to mandatory
drug testing, a senior drug enforcement officer said Friday.

Sergeant Chuck Doucette, head of the RCMP's drug awareness program in
B.C., said there are privacy issues, but police officers are in a
unique position.

"We should come out and lead by example and say we're willing to do
that," said Doucette. "It's something that should be talked about,
considered."

Following the cocaine and heroin overdose death of Courtenay RCMP drug
enforcement officer Barry Schneider, new attention has been focused on
the need for drug tests.

Neither new RCMP recruits nor officers are required to undergo
mandatory drug tests.

Police officers are no more immune to drugs' seduction than anyone
else, Doucette said.

"What this shows is the need for prevention programs, because it
doesn't matter what your background or education or social status is,"
he said. "Drugs can affect anyone in any line of work."

While stress is an accepted part of the job for police officers,
Doucette said Schneider's job as drug awareness coordinator for most
of Vancouver Island is not as stressful as his previous position as an
undercover drug enforcement officer.

There is also speculation that the 43-year-old officer had medical
problems.

Doucette, who worked with Schneider in enforcement and assigned him
the Vancouver Island posting, said his former colleague was a heavy
smoker and stopped drinking because he had a problem with alcohol.

Dr. Ray Baker, a Richmond addiction expert, said despite popular
opinion, police officers, physicians and lawyers are not at increased
risks to have substance abuse problems because of their
occupations.

"The prevalence of addiction is about the same in these groups as they
are in the larger population," Baker said. "The drug of choice may be
different, with physicians and pharmacists and pills, lawyers with
alcohol."

People who have previous addictions, such as smoking and alcohol
abuse, are more likely to become addicted to harder substances, such
as heroin and cocaine, Baker said.

Less than one per cent of the general population is addicted to heroin
or cocaine, while between 10 to 20 per cent are addicted to nicotine
or alcohol.

While the prevalence of addiction in specific occupations is not
significant, certain occupations may attract people with a genetic
predisposition to addictions, according to Baker.

"Kids who grow up in families with alcoholic addictions, we know,
often go into professions where they are either helping, fixing or
controlling other people, in health care, law, police."

Baker, who includes airline pilots and physicians among his patients,
used to treat police officers.

"I found them the most difficult to deal with because in order to deal
with confrontation and conflict all the time, they require strong
defences and my job is to penetrate those defences."

The toughest patients he's ever treated for addiction problems, said
Baker, were undercover police officers.

Simon Fraser University criminologist Neil Boyd, who has studied and
interviewed police officers, said drug enforcement members sometime
feel empathy for the people they investigate.

"If you're investigating a major crime like armed robbery, like
homicides, there's no blurring of the lines," Boyd said Friday.
"Sometime undercover officers will get to know the people they're
following and the moral boundaries get blurred."

Undercover officers, accustomed to layers of subterfuge, are
especially adept at concealing parts of their identity, Boyd said.

As Baker found, Boyd said there are no higher incidents of drug
addiction among police officers when compared with the general
population.