APEX MAN CHARGED WITH COCAINE TRAFFICKING

The addictive practice of freebasing cocaine is growing rapidly among
Iqaluit and south Baffin residents.

IQALUIT - Iqaluit RCMP arrested an Apex resident last week after seizing
what one police officer said amounted to about "an ounce and a half" of
cocaine.

Police made the arrest after conducting a search of a house in Apex May 24.

Guy Berube, 50, was charged with possession of cocaine for the purpose of
trafficking. Berube is scheduled to appear in territorial court in Iqaluit
July 31.

The seized drug has an estimated street value in Iqaluit of about $12,000,
said Cpl. Jim Christensen of the RCMP's drug section in Nunavut.

He says cocaine use in Iqaluit is a growing problem and that the drug is now
appearing in Pangnirtung and Cape Dorset.

"In the last year here, there has been a significant, a very significant
increase in the people that are using cocaine. And it's not just snorting
it - there are people that are smoking it now. It's called freebasing," he
said.

Freebasing, which creates the same effect as smoking crack, has long been a
popular form of drug abuse in the U.S. and southern Canada.

It is considered especially dangerous because of the purity of the drug, and
the high levels of the drug that are quickly delivered to the body through
smoking it, rapidly addicting its users.

"It's rapidly becoming a very major social problem," said Christensen. Part
of the problem, he says, stems from the growing prosperity of the
communities where cocaine is turning up.

"You have to have an economic base for it, because it's an expensive drug.
And of course in the communities you don't have the work opportunities that
you have in Iqaluit. In Pangnirtung and in Dorset you do, there's a money
base," said Christensen.

And money is what the cocaine trade is all about.

While a regular Imperial ounce contains 28 grams, an ounce of cocaine will
be split into what Christensen calls "street grams," which are smaller, he
says, because drug dealers usually rip off their clients.

"It's all about greed," he says. And that greed can have harmful effects.

"If you take a gram of cocaine that costs $200 from people that can't afford
to pay it, that money going tothe drugs is not going to the household, is
not going to the family, for food, for clothing, for household needs."