DRUG DEALER SPARED JAIL BY ALBERTA OIL BOOM

Alberta's booming oil industry helped turn a drug dealer's attention
from illicit profit to legitimate gains, his lawyer said yesterday.

Defence counsel Ed O'Neill said Matthew John Vancamp is now making so
much cash lawfully, he won't be lured back into the easy money of drug
dealing.

"He's working so hard he's put 10% down on two houses," O'Neill told a
Calgary court about his client's successful endeavours in northern
Alberta.

"He does not need the money, the work is so prolific in Fort McMurray
now," O'Neill told Judge Rosemary Nation.

He was responding to suggestions by the Crown that Vancamp should be
sent to a federal prison to deter him and others from allowing greed
to draw them to the drug trade.

Prosecutor Joe Mercier had sought a three-year prison term noting
Vancamp's only reason for selling cocaine was greed.

"He is not a user and appears motivated by profit," he said. "We need
to send a strong message to people in Mr. Vancamp's situation ... that
dealing in such drugs will not be tolerated."

Vancamp, 29, was arrested May 18, 2003, on a gravel road west of
Didsbury when police noticed a speeding vehicle. Officers found 29
individual packages of cocaine, plus 119 grams of marijuana in his
car.

Mercier said Vancamp's lack of an addiction, and three prior drug
convictions were enough to justify a prison term.

But Nation accepted O'Neill's submission that his client no longer
poses a risk to return to the drug trade.

Nation handed Vancamp a 23-month conditional sentence, the first 12
months of which must be served under house arrest.