HIGH TIMES: COCAINE SNARES CITY STUDENTS

Rhonda touches the bridge of her nose and lets out a tiny giggle. "It feels
almost hollow back there," she says, a hint of surprise in her voice.

Cocaine can do that to you, eating through your septum and leaving the
surrounding tissue raw and bloody, never mind the long-term impact on your
body and brain.

Yet Rhonda, like a rising number of teens, is willing to take that risk.

"You do blow and it's like, 'Wow, what have I been missing?'" says the
candid 18-year-old, one of two local students who agreed to speak with
Orillia Today on condition that their real names not be used.

"Everyone is doing it, it's a party drug."

Both enjoy the "rush" and the overwhelming sense of giddiness they say
comes with snorting cocaine, a drug that in many circles is becoming as
readily available as beer and pot.

"You're on top of the world for 20 minutes," adds Sara, also 18.

"You (feel as though you) can do anything. Like you can lift a car."

Once considered the drug of choice among well-heeled professionals with
money to burn, cocaine is gaining in popularity among teens, surfacing with
a regularity that has health officials troubled.

"It is concerning in the sense that cocaine is moving in a completely
different direction than the rest of the drugs," says Dr. Edward Adlaf,
senior-research scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

Evidence of its growing popularity among teens was borne out in a
province-wide survey of student drug use, conducted by the Toronto-based
organization.

Despite an apparent leveling off of illegal drug use, cocaine consumption
remains on an upswing that is said to have started in the early 1990s.

Slightly more than three per cent of seventh graders surveyed last year
admitted to having used cocaine, while more than double that number have
tried it in Grade 12.

"Cocaine is really the only drug at the moment to show any pattern of an
upward movement, " says Adlaf.

Researchers believe that at least some of that trend is the result of
students' changing perceptions, with many viewing cocaine as less harmful
than in past years.

"The perceived risk is dropping, declining," he says.

Cocaine, like marijuana, is also considered to be more readily available
than it was in the late '80s, according to the study's findings.

"It's surprising in the sense that there haven't been too many situations
in the past where we have had a drug like cocaine that would move in
different directions than other kinds of illicit drugs," he adds.

"It has a lot to do with perceived risk."

An Orillia resident, Sara's introduction to coke began at the tender age of
16, in the backseat of a car parked outside a bowling alley.

Over the next two years, it would pop up here and there, mainly at weekend
parties where students divvy it up in neat lines laid out on mirrors, CD
cases or just about anything else with a flat surface, inhaling it through
a rolled up bill.

"Everyone wants to escape," she says of the effect. "It's human."

With university on the horizon and good grades to match, Sara says she
understands the dangers associated with this highly addictive drug and
considers herself an infrequent user, yet doesn't shy from the fact that,
on occasion, she, like many others her age, has indulged in a line or two.

"I know what it can do and I'm not stupid, but I like to have some fun
sometimes," she adds. Drugs, Sara later declares, "are just part of our
culture,"

In the same breath, Rhonda, a frequent user of Ecstasy and other drugs, has
witnessed first-hand cocaine's uglier side effects in the behaviour of
others, including violent and uncontrollable mood swings. "It can be
scary," she says, adding that, "You need a good head to realize where it
can take you if you let it."

Though marijuana still accounts for the lion's share of drug-related
investigations conducted in this region, an undercover OPP officer with the
Huronia Combined Forces Drug Unit attests to the rise in popularity of the
potent white powder.

"Coke was (previously) seen as a drug for the rich," the officer told
Orillia Today. "It was seen as a more expensive drug."

But with prices now hovering at a relatively affordable $80 - $100 per
gram, this once inaccessible party favour is attracting the attention of
teens seeking a new high. "It's a supply and demand thing," he says. "If
you can supply something cheaper, than you are going to see more of it. "It
is readily available anywhere. It is like anything: if you want something,
you can find it."

At the same time, seizures of cocaine and crack - a smokable form of the
drug - are on the rise in Simcoe County, Dufferin and Muskoka, with police
reporting more seizures in the first quarter of 2004 than in all of last year.

"From what I have seen, it is more prevalent than what it has been in other
years," he says. "It is a lot more dangerous than marijuana, a lot more
addictive and a lot more expensive."

Dealers seeking to widen their profit margins routinely 'cut' the drug with
a range of household substances, mixing pure coke with everything "from
baby powder, flower and sugar to rat poison (and) household cleaners.

"Anything that is white and flaky. If it is not white, they will bleach it."

Unlike pot, a drug Ottawa has vowed to decriminalize, cocaine possession
attracts stiff penalties in the courts, particularly for trafficking, he says.

- - In part two Tuesday, Orillia Today looks at the efforts of police and
health officials to combat the rise of cocaine and educate children as to
its dangers.