ABBY GANGSTERS & METH DEALERS TARGETING TWEENS

Young Addicts Make Great Clients

Children under the age of 12 in Abbotsford are regularly using
ecstasy and crystal methamphetamine, and are part of the Lower
Mainland's most sought after market of kids 14 years and younger that
gangs dealing drugs target, according to police, counselors, drug use
experts and former addicts.

Brian Gross is program director at IMPACT, an Abbotsford addiction
and counseling centre for youth between the ages of 12 and 24 and
said children in the community under 12 are actively using ecstasy.

"Absolutely. There are some that age who are using ecstasy . . . most
of it has meth in it and we do a great deal to make kids understand that."

Const. Ian MacDonald with the Abbotsford Police Department said there
is a direct relationship between organized crime and drug distribution.

"We know who they're marketing to. The only objective for organized
crime is to make money and they don't care who consumes their
product," he said.

Mark McLaughlin is the executive director of Crystal Meth British
Columbia, a non-profit society educating youth about the dangers of
methamphetamine drug use.

McLaughlin said meth gets cut into other street drugs like marijuana
and ecstasy.

"Any pill or powder can have meth in it. It can be sprayed on
marijuana . . . as a way to introduce people to meth and get them
addicted to [it]."

Leslie Braithwaite is an addiction and trauma counselor and the
program co-ordinator of the Abbotsford Addiction Centre, and said she
is seeing more and more parents describing children with meth-like
addiction symptoms coming in for counseling.

"[Children say] You know, it's not really like a drug, it's just marijuana.

"But, it isn't just marijuana anymore," she said.

Half a dozen kids found unconscious in a Victoria-area park almost
died from overdosing on meth and were hospitalized for three days,
McLaughlin said.

"These were children in Grade 6, 7 and 8. When the pills were
analyzed, they were found out to be 100 per cent meth, sold [to these
kids] as ecstasy."

Gross said the Victoria park overdoses involving children in Grade 6
is not a one-off occurrence.

"We are seeing kids younger than 12 [for counseling]. It's impossible
to know exactly what they're taking... It isn't an isolated incident.
It's happening [in Abbotsford]."

Children start taking drugs to be included, Gross said.

"If there is a social group they want to belong to, and it involves
drug use, they may be quite open to it. Kids want to belong and there
are all kinds of things they can show that they belong," he said.

Filmmaker Andree Cazabon, a speaker at Wednesday's community drug
forum, battled drug and alcohol addiction as a youth in the late 80s
after being sexually abused when she was 12.

Cazabon fell into gangs and juvenile prostitution as a method of
coping with what happened to her.

The drug trade needs young people to flourish, and the ideal addict
is between the ages of 12 and 15, because that is when a developing
brain is most likely to be addicted, she said, adding drug education
must target younger children to stop kids from using.

"If we want to do any kind of prevention, we have to go into grades
4, 5 and 6," Cazabon said.

"Because by the time kids reach grades 7 and 8 - for some of these
kids - were talking about treatment."