Vancouver's Boom Has A Dark Side

New Business Brings Drug Trafficking

By Howard Schneider
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, April 24 1997; Page A27
The Washington Post

VANCOUVER, B.C. In many ways, Canada's trading boom with the United
States and the rest of the world has been a boon to this coastal city,
as business expanded and immigrants from within and outside the
country flocked to its comparatively temperate climate.

But when social service workers like John Turvey walk the streets of
the city's lower east side, they see another aspect of what the
increasing flow of goods and people has meant. Along the sidewalks of
Hastings Street, drug dealers cluster in groups in front of their
favorite hangouts, trading cash for the small plastic packets they
slip into the hands of customers.

Those on the fringes of the trade the junkies, the runners, and
others mill around the alleys and storefronts of pawnshops that
have become prominent in the neighborhood's economy. Before recent
neighborhood patrol efforts, addicts openly fixed on the street.

It is a scene not lost on law enforcement officials in both countries,
who see in it the same thing as Turvey: evidence of Vancouver's
emergence as a center of North American drug trafficking. With a major
port, a relatively unpatrolled border with the United States, and now
established criminal gangs of every stripe, the city often portrayed
as Canada's Pacific paradise has also become the country's drug and
crime capital.

"The availability is phenomenal," said Turvey, executive director of
the Downtown Eastside Youth Activities Society, which offers addiction
services, counseling and a needle exchange in one of Canada's poorest
neighborhoods. "We are in real trouble."

U.S. officials familiar with the situation say Vancouver has become a
favored point for Asianbased gangs to import heroin destined for
distribution throughout Canada and the United States. Heavy
immigration from Hong Kong and elsewhere has brought with it members
of criminal organizations who have established a presence here, and,
law enforcement officials say, started coordinating their work with
groups in eastern Canada and the eastern United States.

"With the good comes the bad," said a U.S. official familiar with the
drug trade evolving between Canada and the United States. "They are
bringing their organizations with them."

That the market for illegal drugs would evolve in parallel with
overall trade in the two countries was made apparent, unintentionally,
in the recent meeting between President Clinton and Prime Minister
Jean Chretien. Asked at a news conference about drug traffic between
the two countries, Chretien misunderstood and thought the question was
about truck traffic, and answered that an increase was likely and
welcome under trade agreements.

Chretien quickly corrected himself, but law enforcement and diplomatic
officials acknowledge the difficulty of easing the movement of trucks,
planes and trains between the two countries without also easing the
path for smugglers.

Drug trafficking between Canada and the United States has not
historically been an important issue for U.S. authorities, who have
concentrated on narcotics coming from the south, or through U.S.
seaports. But now, they say it is no longer possible to ignore
America's northern border.

In one example of how the market is developing, an otherwise
legitimate shipment of 600 boxes of noodles from China arrived in
Seattle in 1994 with 10 extra crates attached, all of them destined
for a warehouse in Vancouver. The 10 extra boxes contained 156 pounds
of heroin, and were supposed to be retrieved in Vancouver by suspected
associates of a drug gang. It was only through a lucky tip that
authorities did not simply wave the shipment on to its final
destination, but instead seized it in what became one of Canada's
largest drug busts.

In another, officials with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said a
New York dealer began basing his operations in Toronto because, they
suspect, he knew that an arrest in Canada would likely draw a lighter
sentence than in the United States. Canada does not have the same
stiff mandatory minimum sentences or sentencing guidelines as the
United States.

It is uncertain how heavily such concerns factor into the calculations
of drug traffickers, but law enforcement officials say it is one more
reason Canada is an attractive spot to import drugs headed for
America.

Authorities in Vancouver say they are concerned the problem will get
worse, particularly after a recent federal government decision to
disband the local harbor patrol to save money. Policing of the port is
being turned over to the city, but local officials say they have no
funds to keep the 30person force.

"Organized crime operates very successfully in or through the port,"
said Constable Anne Drennan, spokeswoman for the Vancouver police. "We
will do our job as best we can but it is not a rosy picture."

The volume of narcotics moving through Vancouver is evident in
downtown neighborhoods like the one served by Turvey's group.

The city has experienced an epidemic of overdose deaths in recent
years as the quantity of drugs on the market increased, the price
dropped, and the level of purity rose. In addition, the city began
seeing a surge in the use of injected cocaine a peculiarity in the
local market that officials attribute to a rash of dealers swapping
British Columbia's highquality domestic marijuana for cocaine, which
was then marketed among city addicts with a preference for needles.

On Hastings Avenue, a network of pawnshops and allnight stores
developed around the drug trade, and property crime soared. Between
1990 and 1996, thefts from autos increased from 20,000 to more than
38,000.

The situation led the city of 450,000 to what British Columbia coroner
Larry Campbell said is likely one of the highest overdose death rates
in North America. "It's staggering," he said. "There is a tremendous
amount of heroin out there. It is coming from all over the place
all over the world."

Law enforcement officials feel there is a justified perception that
Vancouver is the easiest city in the country in which to be an addict.
Benefits and services, they say, are better than in provinces that
have been cutting social programs, and the judges, apparently, are
more lenient.

Smallscale dealing rarely draws more than a 30day sentence,
according to Drennan and others in the Vancouver police, and
possession crimes typically end with no sentence, if they are
prosecuted at all.

Town, law enforcement and social services officials are in agreement
that the social aspects of drug addiction are more important to
solving the problem in the long run than the brute force of law
enforcement, but the area's reputation is not helping matters in the
meantime.

"The message to people throughout Canada is that it is easier to get
away with a drug offense" in British Columbia, Drennan said, "so if
you are going to be involved in the trade or do drugs, it is better to
do it here."