THE AGONY OF ECSTASY AND THE MAKING OF A LAW

It was a chance meeting aboard a quiet passenger ferry that would
eventually send heavily armed police crashing through the doors of a
Metro Vancouver home and forever change Canadian drug-enforcement policy.

The July 2011 raid was significant not only because it netted five
arrests for suspected drug production but because it was the
culmination of three years of lobbying the federal government to make
illegal the possession of chemicals used to produce methamphetamine
and ecstasy.

That chance 2007 meeting on the Bowen Island ferry between John
Weston, now MP for West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country,
and Cpl. Richard De Jong of the North Vancouver RCMP had all the
makings of a Hollywood screenplay:

An aspiring young politician promises a veteran street cop he'll take
the gloves off law enforcement to help them fight street-drug
manufacturers if he's sent to the capital.

"He offered to give me a legal education on illegal drugs," Weston
told The Outlook, "knowing that I might be elected and knowing that he
was right that I perhaps needed an education on something that was so
important to young people and to families in the riding I now represent."

A promise kept: Weston goes to Ottawa and Cpl. De Jong's plea is
echoed in the country's highest halls of power.

But the barriers of bureaucracy went up and the new anti-drug bill
that seemed a slam dunk for Weston became a lengthy battle of
attrition with fellow politicians and lawmakers.

Meanwhile, in the time since that first ferry meeting, one of Weston's
own constituents would literally become the poster child for ecstasy
and amphetamine awareness.

On May 28, 2008, Erin Spanevello of West Vancouver tried ecstasy one
night and stopped breathing at the age of 21.

"We'd had no previous experience with ecstasy at all," Catherine
Spanevello, Erin's mom, told The Outlook on Monday. "We were being
told names and terms by the coroner and investigators and we just had
no idea what they were talking about."

Since her daughter's death, Catherine's become something of an
unwilling expert on youth ecstasy and meth use, schooling parents,
educators and what she calls her "captive audiences" at mandatory
student assemblies.

And while the North Shore community was still mourning Erin's death,
Weston and his team were in Ottawa writing a private member's bill
they hoped would become a new federal drug law cracking down on
ecstasy and meth producers.

"It was probably six months after I was elected that I decided to
focus on this as something that people in our riding generally
considered a priority," Weston told The Outlook. "It was something
that was relevant to people throughout Canada, across all demographic groups."

The law would eventually come to be known as Bill C-475, an amendment
to the federal Controlled Drugs and Substances Act prohibiting anyone
from possessing, producing selling or importing anything knowing it
would be used to produce or traffic meth or ecstasy.

But it almost didn't happen. Only six private member's bills were
passed in that three-year session of parliament, and this bill marked
only the 15th time since Confederation that the Criminal Code was
amended by a private member's bill, Weston said.

"On the Tuesday before parliament was dissolved, with 72 hours left,
it hadn't even got to second reading in the Senate, nor had it gone to
committee," Weston said. "But it got unanimous support and therefore I
was able to stand before the Governor General the day after the vote
was taken to bring down the House and see the bill signed into law."

It would be the first private member's bill of the session to get
unanimous support and the gravity of that wasn't lost on Weston.

"I walked out of the House [of Commons] and I walked about four blocks
before I realized I'd gone in the wrong direction," Weston said. "I
turned around and realized that this was something very special that
many long-term parliamentarians never get to experience."

That feeling was only topped, he said, when information was made
public in October about the July 21, 2011 raid on the alleged Richmond
drug lab, one of the first busts under Bill C-475.

In memory of her daughter, Catherine Spanevello applauds the drug bill
and its use within the province and across the country.

"I think the ability for law enforcement to identify the ingredients
for synthetic drugs and prevent them from ever making it to the street
is a powerful tool," Spanevello said. "And I hope this will be an
incentive for lawmakers to continue to improve our laws to give more
power to preventative rather than reactive measures against illegal drug use."

Motivated by his success with Bill C-475, Weston said he is already
mulling a new private member's bill, this time taking on the illegal
use and abuse of prescription drugs.