DRUG FORUM WARNS OF ABUSE ON THE NORTH SHORE

Parental Involvement Is Child'S Key Influence

UNLESS the community contributes more money and resources to services
and programs for North Shore youth, the drug abuse rate will quickly
deteriorate according to a RCMP constable.

Const. Shane Tuckey stressed that the geographical division of the
North Shore has bred a psychological division where parents, teachers
and politicians don't believe illegal drugs are much of a problem in
North Shore communities.

"Drug trafficking and drug users are up and it's significantly worse
than it was 10 years ago," Tuckey said. "Ecstasy is the drug of choice
on the North Shore allowing kids to hallucinate."

The number of Grade 8 kids who have tried marijuana is approximately
34%. Four years later in Grade 12 that number jumps to 64%. Although
no one at the substance abuse symposium on Saturday held at North
Vancouver District hall was too worried about the actual effects of
marijuana, many see it as a stepping stone to harder drugs.

With the price of heroin having gone down and the purity level gone
up, the drugs bought are often not what they are thought to be. This
leads to many more overdoses.

Tuckey, who buys drugs when doing his undercover work, routinely sends
the drugs to a Burnaby lab where the results differ widely from what
the person selling the drug says.

"The elevation in the purification of the drug is enormous," Tuckey
said.

"People are buying from dial-a-dopers and ordering ecstasy, pot and
PCPs (horse tranquilizers) by cellphone. The community has to
contribute more prevention and outreach services because our kids are
the key to our future. If we don't, we will end up with a situation
like the United States," Tuckey said.

"There's a huge apathy among the teachers in this district," said Bill
Weselowski a former cocaine and heroin addict turned counsellor.

"This community's ability is only limited by their willingness (to
solve the problem)."

Weselowski runs the Innervisions recovery centre in Coquitlam with no
government funding and stresses the scared straight strategy.

Innervisions charges $36 a night for the first month of treatment in
the recovery house compared to $1,200 a night that a hospital-housed
addict costs the taxpayer. Innervisions boasts an 80% success rate
with its 12-step program. It's unmatched in few other centres.

Weselowski's program is one of the most successful in the province,
taught by a former addict who spent 20 of his 35 years doing
everything from drinking lemon gin to snorting $300 worth of cocaine a
day.

A similar program like Weselowski's 15-bed two-storey house treatment
facility would be welcome on the North Shore according to Coun. Janice
Harris, but there is often a catch.

Government funding aims at methadone treatment programs not abstinence
according to Weselowski. The Innervisions policy is an abstinence
program that doesn't condone the methadone treatment approach, thus
funding has to come from private sources.

Harris suggested that the North Vancouver District could rent out some
of the houses the district owns for $1 a year to a group willing to
run a similar program like Innervisions.

Most people at the one-day symposium agreed that scare tactics in
isolation do not work in preventing kids from using drugs and neither
does education in isolation.

Most resources on educating kids are spent on those aged 15-16 years
of age and older, but families and educators have to start earlier in
getting the message out according to Art Steinman, executive director
of the Alcohol-Drug Education Service in Vancouver.

Steinman believes that parental involvement is the single most
powerful education influence a child has. Decision-making skills,
refusal skills and how to say no are what kids in elementary and high
school need to learn.

Coun. Trevor Carolan cautioned that teaching kids to say no is not
easy. Experimentation is part of human nature and Carolan suggested
that maybe policy makers should address whether some type of
experimenting is acceptable.

"How do you teach kids to say no and save face and not look like a
nerd?" Carolan said. "The last thing kids need is more guilt."

How to use drugs safely was not an issue anyone seemed willing to
advocate, especially Bill Weselowski a former cocaine and heroin
addict turned counsellor.

"I've never met a recreational heroin user," Weselowski
countered.

The battle against educating kids about drugs according to Steinman is
a multi-fold approach. Every government ministry, social worker,
outreach program and drug abuse centre deals with the drug issues in
its own narrowly defined way oriented at serving its particular
clients -- heroin addicts, fetal alcohol syndrome, ecstasy.

The Association of Substance Abuse Program's Dan Reist said
coordination of services is sorely needed in B.C. and a commission to
oversee prevention, intervention, treatment, rehabilitation and drug
courts should be established.

Part of the uphill struggle against illegal drugs is society's
acceptance of gateway drugs (alcohol and tobacco), which kill 15,000
and 35,000 people respectively each year in Canada.

Dr. Neil Boyd, a Simon Fraser University criminologist said it's not
surprising that kids view the laws against hard drugs as hypocritical
when more people die from tobacco and alcohol.

"In the realm of legal drugs things are getting better but in the
realm of illegal drugs things are getting worse," Boyd said. The rate
of alcohol consumption has declined since 1975 in Canada and the
strategy against young smokers and drinkers should be used to educate
young kids about illegal drug use, Boyd said.

The overall message seemed to be for parents to start talking to their
children well before the age of 15 about drugs in society and in
particular their own community. The proliferation of drugs in
Vancouver's Downtown Eastside is only a SeaBus ride away and kids need
the resources to make good choices.

Today's youth will invariably experiment with some drugs given the
many choices available at parties and the accessibility of obtaining
drugs at school via pager or cellphones. Steinman said that just
saying no to kids is not the answer. Education at an early age from
parents will allow most kids who experiment to self-correct.

"Essentially this problem is about people. Drugs come and go and kids
who have healthy choices in life have a relatively low risk of drug
abuse," Steinman said.