NOTHING FUNNY ABOUT CRYSTAL METH

Drug Is Becoming A Scourge In Victoria

VICTORIA -- Folks joke about grass; stand-up comics riff on reefers; Bill
Clinton didn't inhale; Cheech and Chong never stopped inhaling; and
snowboarder Ross Rebagliati's Olympic medal was actually Acapulco Gold.

But folks don't tell jokes about crystal meth. They tell anecdotes without
a punchline.

About a frenzied man masturbating on the boulevard.

About a deranged woman dancing the Funky Chicken at dawn.

About an agitated teenager wandering into a shop while shouting
incoherently. He was in search of . . . who knows?

Dan Parker talks about a chess-playing cross-country runner, a motivated
student who pawns his Christmas gift of a guitar to buy crystal
methamphetamine. He talks about a son too often lost to his addiction.

"He's the guy next door. If you bumped into him at the mall, you'd think he
was a great guy."

For 10 years, Mr. Parker has struggled with his son's troubles. He has
added locks to every room in the family home in which his son might find an
item to steal to pawn for drug money. The home office, the master bedroom,
the family media room are all secured. He can live without the valuables,
but he cannot live with the possibility of his modest possessions
supporting a habit.

Besides, in the Jekyll and Hyde world of a drug addict, Mr. Parker knows it
is not the son he loves who is a thief. It is the drug.

Mr. Parker and his wife joined about 200 others in a high-school theatre on
Monday night to discuss ice, jib, crank, speed, sketch, tina. The community
forum was the second stop on a four-city tour organized by The Province
newspaper. The Vancouver tabloid published a series in April by reporter
Matthew Ramsey, whose addicted cousin lives in a one-room wooden shack
where among his meagre possessions is a wooden box containing meth.

The drug is becoming a scourge in a capital city still wrestling with
heroin. Local health officials and politicians are considering the creation
of safe-injection sites, following Vancouver's example, which generated
controversy and headlines around the world.

That debate has only just begun in Victoria even as those in the theatre on
Monday raise a cry about the threat posed by crystal meth.

As seems de rigueur for these kinds of events, recovering addict Jenny
Jones, 28, told her harrowing tale of degradation during three years of
meth abuse.

Saanich Police Constable Kim Basi drew gasps from the audience by listing
ingredients used in making the white powder: lye, rat poison, acetone,
methyl hydrate, pseudoephedrine, Drano.

Constable Basi works with young girls at risk of being sexually exploited,
many of whom regard meth as "the skinny drug." Lose weight, get high. She
said the street price for a tenth of a gram is $10 to $15.

The two-hour session had its Reefer Madness moments. Gord Robson held up a
$9 kit that detects drugs in a user's urine, saying, "If I had my way, we'd
test in high school every time a kid disrupted."

Audience member Maura Lamb, the proprietor of the Irish Linen Stores,
described her staff's fear of handling addicts who wander into her store in
the tourist district on Government Street.

"There's an underlying current of violence," she told the panel. "When
someone wanders into my business, they're confused, edgy.

"How do you reach them? It seems they're in a world of their own."

One suggestion she appreciated was to offer water. She has noticed how
users' bodies vibrate, and imagines such exertion would quickly be dehydrating.

The forum was held shortly after the sale of one of the city's most
notorious drug hangouts. The Holiday Court Motel was "22 rooms of trouble,"
in one writer's memorable phrase, a one-stop spot for drugs and violence.
The city had its own urban legend about unwitting tourists in station
wagons with children in the back seat pulling into what must have seemed
like the devil's own driveway.

Now, the desperate can be found along the banks of the Inner Harbour, in
the alleys of the tourist zone and, especially, in the 900-block of Pandora
Avenue, where the Open Door provides food and services, while the adjacent
sidewalks and doorways and grassy boulevard are a stage for unpredictable
and disturbing behaviour.

Crystal meth is so cheap and so potent some cabbies say the day after
Welfare Wednesday is known as Overdose Thursday.

Marketers push the notion to tourists of Victoria's reputation as a spot of
Merry Olde England, even as the port city has grappled with a long history
of substance abuse issues from which it has not been immune in recent
decades. The City of Gardens has been an innovator in harm-reduction
policies, from introducing an early needle exchange to replacing the drunk
tank with a sobering centre.

Later this month, Victoria Mayor Alan Lowe will travel to Europe to examine
supervised injection sites for heroin users. He will be joined in Bern,
Switzerland, and Frankfurt, Germany, by Richard Stanwick, the chief medical
health officer of the Vancouver Island Health Authority.

Dr. Stanwick has nothing but praise for Vancouver's new safe-injection
site, which he considers to be a top-of-the-line model. While Vancouver has
the BMW of safe-injection sites, he said, Victoria only needs a Volkswagen.

He thinks the sites can be placed in existing facilities spread throughout
the capital region to service an estimated 1,200 to 1,500 users, not all of
them living on the street. A client entering a clinic could be arriving for
medical aid, or to inject drugs in a safe environment. No one will know,
although he suspects neighbours will soon notice a reduction in the number
of discarded needles lying in the grass and on the curb.

"There's a lot of support already," Dr. Stanwick said of treating drug use
as a health issue instead of one of policing. "They're saying that what
we're doing now is not really working. This is a disease."

He anticipates much consultation in coming months. "This is not done to a
community," he said. "It is done with a community."

Even as he tries to wrestle with heroin use, the arrival of crystal meth
causes Dr. Stanwick concern. He worries many experimenting young people do
not appreciate the drug's addictive qualities, nor its lasting effect on
mental health.

He knows local dealers have cut ecstasy tablets with crystal meth, creating
a potent drug about which a user will be unaware.

"It's more than ecstasy extra, it's ecstasy plus," he said. "And it's a
devious means of creating a clientele of highly addicted individuals."