DRUG DEPENDENCY LEADS TO MORE CRIME

IT STARTED with a few morphine pills, obtained illegally but meant to
soothe constant neck pain from a car accident.

But as addiction took hold of one young Sault Ste. Marie woman, the
commonly used pharmaceutical kicked off a shoplifting spree that eventually
put her in jail.

Easy to sell or trade for a fix, meat from the grocery store was a common
target, she says. Worldly possessions were pawned. "I had a car, I had a
house, jeez I had a stereo; I had a lot of stuff," says the woman.

Local officials say it's hardly an isolated incident. "I don't know how
many people we see on a regular basis and they're stealing stuff from
grocery stores or shoplifting, that type of stuff," says Crown attorney
Glen Wasyliniuk.

His office doesn't prosecute drug matters -- the Controlled Drugs and
Substances Act is prosecuted federally -- but he says provincial courts
seem to increasingly get "the spinoff."

"You always had your addicts," Wasyliniuk says, but the mainstay alcohol
can be directly attributed to crimes of a more violent nature that tend to
involve a "punch out" between combatants, he said.

"People addicted to drugs like morphine, it's more of a theft-related
thing," he said.

The woman is clean now, after attending a local methadone clinic for
several months. In her days as an addict, though, she says she moved on
from popping pills to draining morphine from prescription patches and
injecting it into her veins in a mixture of vinegar and water.

Dr. Lino Pistor insists his patients remain anonymous. Pistor is a local
psychiatrist who oversees the Ontario Addictions Treatment Centre on Queen
Street, one of two methadone clinics that opened recently in the Sault. He
says a danger inherent in the drug culture is that personal information has
the potential to be used against you by another addict.

Though still dangerous in large doses, methadone is used to treat addiction
to opiates because it lacks the same "euphoria" as other opiates, says Pistor.

Pistor, who provides psychiatric services at the city jail and Algoma
Treatment and Remand Centre, said a few particular drug-related crimes seem
to have become more common.

"It's not uncommon, if someone knows you're getting morphine for your
chronic pain problem, that they turn up at your house two days later," he said.

Double doctoring -- getting prescriptions from more than one doctor -- also
seems to happen more often and doctors have had to become more vigilant
about keeping prescription pads out of reach for fear of theft, Pistor said.

Most addicts don't commit crimes or end up in jail, but a small proportion
are directly connected to a large amount of the city's overall crime, says
Pistor.

"You do have a large proportion of crime that's associated with the
drug-seeking behaviour."

Another patient of Pistor's, a man, has been clean for several years,
having travelled to Barrie for his first methadone prescriptions until
Pistor's office opened in December.

Four years ago he had a heart attack he attributes directly to 30 years of
abusing alcohol, marijuana and speed. More recently he was hooked on
Percocet, morphine and oxycodone.

"Without (methadone) I'd be dead," he says.

The emergence of widespread morphine use in the Sault several years ago saw
overdose deaths numbering in the double digits.

Now city police report only five drug overdose deaths in the last two
years; all of them suicides.

"My impression is that (morphine users) are better-educated," said Pistor.

A recent rise in oxycodone and morphine use can at least partly be
attributed to a new approach to chronic pain management that encourages
doctors to prescribe the more potent opiates, said Pistor.

"A guy has a car accident and needs pain killers for a month and gets on
Percocet and now has just stayed on Percocet for the last five years," he said.

He said OxyContin and Percocet are more popular because of their "much more
euphoric and energetic" effects.

However Pistor doesn't denounce the pharmaceuticals, because the small
fraction of people who become addicted contrasts to the vast majority who
are able to lead better lives because of the painkilling effect.

Friday: Domestic violence hurts our community.