CRACK COCAINE ADDICTS JUST CAN'T QUIT

Even if they wanted to, the city's crack cocaine users can't "get
clean" because there are few treatment programs available.

The findings were released in a new study which relyed on interviews
with crack users in Campbell River, Nanaimo and Prince George.

"Numerous study participants stated that even going for
detoxification would make little sense for them, since there are so
few available treatment options to enter after detoxification," the
study's authors wrote, "and most users end up in their previous
drug-use environments and habits.

"On this basis, most participants saw any attempt to quit crack use
as a futile effort in the long run."

As well, big-city problems associated with crack cocaine are on the
rise in Campbell River and need to be dealt with immediately,
concludes the study.

"In many B.C. communities, crack use is the number-one street drug
problem, yet we give it much lower attention than other forms of drug
use," said Benedikt Fischer, lead author of the study which will be
published next month in Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy. "We
need better and more targeted prevention and treatment for crack use
in order to reduce its enormous negative public health impact."

Fischer, a health sciences researcher from Simon Fraser University,
led a team which interviewed crack users from July-November 2008.
They found participants with the help of local social and health
service agencies, and also by word-of-mouth recruiting among the
local population of drug users.

Participants had to be at least 16 years old, be regular crack
cocaine smokers (smoking on at least half of the 30 days before their
interviews) and provide informed verbal consent. No personal
information was collected, and each participant received a $20 honorarium.

There were 148 participants in the study, 37 in Campbell River, 70 in
Nanaimo and 41 in Prince George.

On average, the study showed crack use is associated with, "extensive
social and health risks and harms, which currently are not
sufficiently addressed by the existing interventions in the study
sites," it says. "Concerted attention to, and delivery of, targeted
prevention and treatment interventions for the public health problem
of crack use in Canada is urgently required."

Many of the crack users are likely to be homeless, be involved in
criminal activity, be using a wide variety of other drugs and
alcohol, and to be smoking up unsafely with home-made paraphernalia,
putting themselves and others at risk of transmitted diseases.

A big problem

There aren't enough treatment and harm reduction programs in Campbell
River to help crack users.

"There's a huge need for them here," said Del Grimstad, a positive
wellness counsellor and harm reduction worker with AIDS Vancouver
Island's Campbell River office.

But it's not easy to set up new programs. Two years ago, AIDS
Vancouver Island launched a program to distribute mouthpieces for
crack smokers in several communities, including Campbell River.

The mouthpieces are designed to prevent the spread of communicable
diseases such as HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, tuberculosis, and syphilis.
However, the program prompted some public concerns.

The distribution program is still awaiting the approval of city
council, Grimstad said.

How to fix it?

The study recommends several ways to treat crack users, and reduce
the number of people addicted in small cities such as Campbell River.
It recommends:

- - Improved resources and training for health workers.

- - Improved accessibility to infectious-disease testing.

- - "Crack kit" distribution programs.

- - Safer inhalation facilities for crack users.

Local crack users

- - Have, on average, been using for 12.8 years, longer than people in
Nanaimo or Prince George.

- - Typically make their own crack-smoking paraphernalia with found
items or items purchased in a store.

- - Are mostly male (56.8 per cent of respondents).

- - Are mostly between the ages of 21-50.

- - Generally have either stable housing, or no housing.

- - Get most of their income from social benefits.

- - Have been arrested at least once in the past year (48.5 per cent).

- - Report a higher percentage of mental and emotional health problems
than respondents in the other two communities.

- - Use more alcohol as well as crack (78.4 per cent) than the other
two communities.

- - Have had more overdoses (four) than the other two communities.