METH MENACE WORRIES POLICE

Crystal meth. Also known as jib or ice. It would probably look cool
rattling around inside a kaleidoscope.

Inside the human body it does horrific things. And it's invading Victoria
young people in numbers that are making police and health officials sit up
and take notice.

Victoria police Sgt. Darren Laur has worked in the city, primarily
downtown, for 17 years. He's seen a lot of things come down the pipe, so to
speak.

The increasing availabilty of crystal meth, used by at least 30 members of
the city's downtown street population, has him worried. "It's a horrible,
horrible drug. Of all the drugs that I've been dealing with down here in
the core for the past 17 years, this one is causing me some concern," he said.

The drug, either heated up and the vapour inhaled or melted down and
injected, alters users' sense of normalcy, Laur said.

He recalled seeing one young man taking a puff from a glass pipe that, like
many users, he had manufactured out of a regular glass tube. As the man
fired up his miniature butane torch - the lighter of choice for meth
smokers - and heated up the chemical, Laur could see his fingers turning
red from the heat.

"He didn't even care, he was that focused on the drug."

Laur said city police haven't seen crystal meth used in the open as much as
has been the case in Vancouver, a situation that mirrors cocaine use in the
city.

Nonetheless, he remains concerned.

Laur told Victoria city councillors last week that cocaine and heroin users
are generally staying away from crystal meth. On the other hand, those
using crystal meth have said they stick with it because of the low cost.

Twenty dollars worth of cocaine will keep a person high for about 30 to 40
minutes, he said, while a $10 "point" of crystal meth can last for eight hours.

"The problem is, they don't truly understand the neurotoxicity of it," Laur
said.

The dangerous thing about people using crystal meth, Stanwick said, is you
can't tell who is going to wind up with permanent brain damage and who isn't.

"There's nothing we can do to bring those young people's brains back to
where they were before they started taking it," Stanwick said.

Even detoxing from crystal meth takes longer than other drugs, Stanwick
said. "The way our treatment regimes are set up, it sometimes takes 17 to
18 days for these kids to begin taking control of their lives."

Earlier this year, the local youth detox centre increased its service to
provide four beds 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Stanwick said,
however, it's not whether the region has the capacity to handle more detox
patients, it's whether the community is able to respond to this new challenge.

"I think we've started to make a lot of progress in the four pillars
approach. I think we're starting to see a shift in community attitude," he
said.

A large part of the four pillars approach - embraced in Vancouver and being
looked at in Victoria - involves early education.

"What we have to look at is why is it so attractive, why do we have this
attraction to beauty and thinness. I think a lot of the issues has to be
taken back to rearing kids that have that resourcefulness."

Laur agrees that hard-hitting education is the key to getting through to
youth. He occasionally speaks in schools about the dangers of drug use and
said there may be great value in bringing in a recovering addict to talk to
young people.

"We can't pull any punches. If we treat it in a p.c. way they're going to
treat it as garbage and not take anything from it- If we don't educate our
youth properly and truthfully and honestly, then guess what? They're going
to dabble in this drug."

>From an enforcement standpoint, Laur said most busts for dealing crystal
meth have taken place in the 800 and 900 block of Pandora Avenue.

"I don't think they're cooking it locally yet," he said. "I think a lot of
the crystal meth we're dealing with here on Vancouver Island is coming from
the Mainland, much like most of our other drug supplies other than marijuana."

The Medical Post reported this month that the RCMP raided 40 crystal meth
labs in B.C. last year. It added that state police in Washington shut down
1,400 labs there in 2002.

Finding a crystal meth lab here would present a dangerous set of
circumstances because of the chemical toxicity of the materials.

"It's highly explosive," Laur said. "There have been a number of instances
in the States where labs have blown up and as a result of that people,
including law enforcement officers, have been seriously injured or killed."

The drug, once known as speed, originated down the West Coast of the United
States and in Hawaii, Laur said, and has worked its way north over the past
10 years.

Cities such as Seattle-Tacoma and even Port Angeles are having serious
problems with the spread of crystal meth use.

Laur said his counterparts on the Olympic Peninsula have told him they are
surprised the problems haven't become as serious a short boat ride away in
Victoria.

A detective who works in the Olympic Peninsula Narcotics Enforcement Team
told the Victoria News of the major problems his group is seeing in nearby
Port Angeles and the surrounding area.

The detective, who chose to speak anonymously, said much of the product
comes into the area from Mexico.

"It's so cheap," he said. "We get reports of kids all the time that are 12
or 13 (using) and by the time they drop out of their school programs, by
the time they start to commit crimes and fall into our hands, they're
already addicts."

Coun. Dean Fortin and Greater Victoria school board chair Charley Beresford
are planning a trip to Seattle to find out more about strategies for
dealing with the problem there. Drug problems in Victoria, specifically the
idea of a safe injection site, will be the topic of a forum on the four
pillars approach tonight (April 28) from 7 to 9:30 at city hall.