MESSAGE LOST ON FOES OF PIPE PLAN

At the top of a long, narrow, dingy stairway on Rideau St. is a small room
where 15 male and two female drug addicts have come since April 1 -- some
as young as 15 -- to get their free crack-cocaine kits, and the wall poster
for their eyes would suggest a world descending into immorality and lunacy.

This is the headquarters of Operation Go Home, dedicated to reuniting
runaway problem youth with their families, and Erica Tomkinson, youth
services director, nods her head that those "who think just throw them all
in jail" would not accept the message of her agency's poster.

Under the words High Corner Entrees and Safe Crack Combo, the poster hypes:
"This heat-resistant Pyrex glass tube allows you to cook it the way you
like. Hard body for extra durability. No sharp or broken edges for ultimate
blood-free pleasure."

That's for the crack-cocaine smokers.

For the crack-cocaine injectors: "Always sharp. (Needles) Just one hit and
that's all you need, keeping your vein in top shape. See-through body with
markings allowing you to gauge your consumption. Highly-recommended for
one-time use. Best served with cookers, filters, and clean water. Three
sizes for your appetite: Available in one-half cc, 1 cc, or 3 ml."

The city health department's endorsement of no-cost crack cocaine kits for
the smokers is for the hygienic safety of society's non-users as well as
the users, what with desperate addicts resorting to all manner of
make-shift devices such as asthma puffers, pens, soft drink cans, pieces of
lead pipe; often dirty, seldom cleaned after use, passed on to other
addicts, and with the proven reality of HIV and hepatitis C viruses
transmitted to users and non-users through blood from dry and split lips
that often are a consequence of consistent crack smoking.

The kit contains the "pipe" materials and assembly instructions for
smoking; two candies for sucking while indulging; a tube of lip balm; two
lubricated, mint-flavoured condoms; two non-lubricated, non-flavoured
condoms; two packages of lubricant; an antiseptic towelette for the hands;
an alcoholic swab for cleaning the pipe.

Erica Tomkinson says almost all who've come in to get their kits expressed
the desire to get off the addiction. "They'll say 'I wish I hadn't started
it,' and 'I didn't realize what was going to happen.' Some might mean it,
some not. All the agency can do is go on good faith, with referral
directions for rehabilitation, it can't do it for them."

The price of crack is usually from $20 to $100 per "rock," depending on the
size, and those who want it have no problem finding it on the streets of
Ottawa; it's a flourishing industry. "Crack users will do anything to get
the money for it," says Tomkinson. "That first high is apparently
incredible. They want it again and again. It's a highly addictive drug.
They say the euphoria is indescribable, they have no inhibitions. They say
their sex drive is heightened.

"They'll resort to theft, pawning, selling their bodies for sex to get the
money. The heavily addicted will smoke it all day, all night, non-stop. The
drug becomes their entire life. They're nervous wrecks. They don't rest,
they don't eat, they don't sleep. They lose weight, their health suffers."

Looking. They're always looking for the rocks. They lose their sense of
reality -- they'll crawl on the ground, looking for a rock.

"I know a man who's in recovery now, he had a thriving landscaping
business, a big home, cars, a boat, a wife and children. He wound up
selling almost everything he had to get the money to buy the crack. He lost
everything within a three-month period. His business. His home. His family."

But, to those who think it's wrong to be giving crack addicts the equipment
needed to feed their habit, she asks: "I'd like to know how they'd stop it?
How would they rid drugs from the planet? They have no answers. Their
answer is 'They're all criminals, lock them up.'

"There are people who think all those who smoke crack are dirty, lazy,
they're lowlifes, they're criminals. You can't generalize. Many are good
people who made bad choices in life. They're stuck and want to get out. How
many of us haven't made bad choices in life?"

Next door to Operation Go Home is an "accessories" shop that, among its
merchandise, sells drug paraphernalia, and T-shirts you can order from a
wall of designs, one of them called Cannabis depicting the flag of Canada
with a marijuana leaf in the centre; another the words: I Try To Say No To
Drugs, But They Won't Listen.