GOOD KIDS, BAD GANGS AND A SOLUTION

A University of Victoria student I met last fall when I was teaching a
journalism course let me read an interview he'd done with a Vancouver
gang member -- a childhood friend of his.

It was an extraordinary read. Everybody has an opinion on why gangs
have become such a deadly problem in B.C. and how we'll get a handle
on things, but it was fascinating to get a look at the issue from the
point of view of a former gang member.

Like a lot of the young people caught up in Vancouver's gang scene
now, this kid had grown up as a generally happy and well-cared-for
child in a financially comfortable family. Boys emerging from
impoverished, troubled childhoods are still the primary recruits for a
lot of Canadian gangs, but the rise of a new kind of gang culture in
Vancouver points to more complicated risk factors that we've barely
begun to understand.

This young man was drawn into gang life after meeting another teen, a
couple of years older, who had it all going on: Money, cars, girls,
drugs, stature among his peers. The older teen asked the boy if he
wanted to earn a little money selling marijuana to his
secondary-school classmates.

Within months, he was making more money than he'd ever imagined. He'd
also undergone a transformation among his peers: From the quiet kid at
school nobody noticed, to the one who everybody wanted to hang out
with.

He had a cool car, lots of girls interested in him and access to the
best drugs. Heady stuff when you're an invincible 16-year-old.

Neither this boy nor anyone he worked with in the gang seemed to worry
too much about running afoul of the law. So I'd counsel thinking twice
before assuming that more policing and tougher jail sentences will
solve Vancouver's escalating problems. Things are always much more
complex than that.

The boy was eventually invited to be a truck driver for the gang,
moving drugs back and forth over the U.S. border. The older teen
continued to be a mentor of sorts, even inviting the boy to room with
him for a while after he fought with his parents over the source of
the money supporting his lavish new lifestyle. The parties at the new
place were non-stop.

In his eight years in the business, he never got caught. He made a ton
of money. The only reason he left gang life was because guys above him
in the hierarchy started getting killed by rival gangs, and he knew
his time would be coming soon if he didn't get out. He's back at
university now, studying to be a pharmacist.

A word like "gang" is emotionally charged, but at its essence a gang
is an organization in the business of buying, selling or producing
something that's illegal.

The product can be just about anything. I remember reading a few years
ago about U.S. gangs that specialized in hazardous waste, because
there was a lucrative business at that time in illegal dumping.

Here in B.C., it's mostly drugs, a trade we are superbly placed to
handle due to our long coastline, proximity to the U.S. and
sophisticated network of marijuana operations.

Were the product anything but illegal drugs, the B.C. government would
be bragging about the sector's runaway success. Like it or not, it's
an immensely successful industry, albeit one in which murder is an
acceptable business strategy for resolving rivalries and personal slights.

Gangs exist because many, many people in the mainstream community want
to do illegal things and go looking for someone to provide it.

So either we're going to have to stop buying anything illegal, or
we're going have to make more things legal in hopes of cutting into
gang profits.

We obviously don't want to be legalizing every criminal activity. But
it seems to me we could make significant progress by starting with
drugs and sex. Decades of bad law haven't done a thing to curb demand
or supply of either of those products, so it's not like we'd be
abandoning a winning strategy.

It's the mainstream community's buying habits that fuel gang activity.
Any real solution has to involve making gang life less profitable.

Yes, we also need enforcement, and meaningful tools for understanding
the small segment of privileged, middle-class boys who end up
attracted to the egocentric and anti-social world of gangs.

But we'll get to the root of the problem only by taking the money out
of it.