COP SHARES FACTS ON STREET DRUG SCENE

What better way to forefront drugs than to hear about it from the
mouth of a cop who has worked the streets of Medicine Hat for years.

Cst. Chris Sheehan of the Medicine Hat Police Service spent almost an
hour talking to a large group of people at Medicine Hat College about
drugs in the community.

Sheehan is a patrol cop, but was an undercover for years here and
across Canada buying drugs off the streets. He said he's got a good
understanding of drugs in the Hat and is an expert drug witness in
court. Sheehan added he probably knows every drug dealer in the city.

Ten years ago he said it would have been hard to buy a gram of
cocaine.

"Nowadays you could do it 25 times an hour and that's very concerning
to me."

One thousand grams of cocaine would be gone in two days, he
said.

He said typically a gram of crack cocaine goes for about $80 a gram,
but added you probably only get .70, because the other 0.30 "is bunk."

He categorized cocaine as hard and soft. Soft cocaine is typically
inhaled and hard cocaine (crack) is smoked.

Sheehan also talked about the increase in tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)
levels in marijuana over the years. THC is what gives users the high.
In 1970 there was about a three to four per cent THC level in
marijuana. In 2000, it was between 10 and 18 per cent, he said.

"What's the generation going to be like that's next?"

He said growing marijuana is a $1 billion a year industry in B.C. and
Canada, behind Mexico, is the largest importer of cannabis to the
U.S., he said.

To showcase the amount of drugs in the city he said the police from
2002 to 2003 had a 113 per cent increase in drug charges. More than
one million dollars in drugs were recovered.

He also said Medicine Hat has some morphine addicts. He said users can
buy a pill of OxyContin, which is prescribed opiate, for anywhere from
$1 to $6 on the street. He said dealers sell their prescription pill
re-fills to users.

He said there is nothing worse than locking a morphine addict up in
the Remand Centre and seeing in three hours how they are when they
need their fix.

"They're begging you to put them out of their misery."

He said he knows an addict that held up a drugstore that he overdosed
in the day before, just so he could try and get a morphine hit.

Sheehan also explored methamphetamines. He said they're in the
northern and western part of the province, which is a bigger a problem
than down south. But it is below us, because Sheehan said meth is a
huge problem for police in Montana.

"We have a fighting chance against meth," he said, but not against
cocaine.

Typically meth, which is more commonly referred to as a jib on the
streets, sells for about the same price as cocaine at $80 to $100 a
gram. He said meth can be a problem drug for users and for cops.

"Your crime rate is going to go up quite a bit."

He said phosphoric acid (found in drain cleaner) red phosphorus and
lithium are often laced into the meth.

"You're smoking this concoction. That can't be good for
you."

He said meth addicts can suffer from such things as hallucinations,
paranoia, increased heart rate and are known to even get "meth mites"
or "speed bumps." The bumps are essentially welts on the skin that
users are known to pick at.

Lysergic acid diethylamide, (LSD) or more commonly acid, is a drug
Sheehan said has come back to the city.

"There's lots of it around here," he said. "Now it's mainstream again.
It's kind of a scary drug."

He says this because when people take LSD they can
hallucinate.

"They really believe that what they see is true."

A hit of LSD can cost anywhere from $15 to $40.