COKE: POWDERED DEATH

Kids Line Up To Use It And Think Nothing Will Happen To Them

When Matt was just 15 years old, cocaine took hold of his life.
Bingeing on the magnetic drug, the Scarborough teen ran away from
home, disappeared from his high school and spent 17 days hiding out in
a ravine. A fire kept him warm, his friends kept him high.

For Matt, who is 19 years old now, it was the low point of his life
and has become an inspiration for him to move forward. But it's not
easy to forget, especially in his school where he sees students all
around him snorting coke at parties, after school and even at lunch
time.

"It's much worse than anyone thinks," Matt said outside Woburn
Collegiate. "Kids line up to use cocaine and they think nothing will
happen to them."

IT'S EASY TO GET

On any school day, Matt said he could find at least 10 students who
would sell him cocaine.

"And that's without me giving it any thought at all, just off the top
of my head," Matt said.

"It's very easy to get, easier to access than alcohol," he said.

At any random time of any random day, Matt sees and hears the
tell-tale signs of cocaine use in his school: The feet in the locked
bathroom stall turned the wrong way, the sound of a bill being rolled
into a scroll and then the "unmistakable snort."

But it's not just in this one high school. It's not just teenagers.
It's at university parties, weddings and dinner parties. The use of
powdered cocaine is growing throughout this city, at such a rate that
police and researchers believe Toronto is in the midst of a
1980s-style party drug revival.

"There is evidence to suggest this is not just a blip we are seeing,
there is a significant change in attitudes and the way people use the
drug," said Dr. Edward Adlaf, the lead researcher with the Centre for
Addiction and Mental Health. "The popularity of drugs (is) cyclical.
We've gone through it before with cocaine and now it's back."

The reasons for the drug's rebirth are many. A supply which has grown
anywhere from 200% to 700% in the past eight years has cut street
prices in Toronto by 40%, allowing access to a seductive drug once
only the affluent could afford. A public which has become more
accepting of the drug, spurred by a coroner's office which admittedly
made a concerted effort to emphasize the dangers of Ecstasy instead of
cocaine even though 10 times more people in Toronto die of cocaine
than the so-called "rave drug" in an average year.

'PART OF IT IS OUR FAULT'

"Part of it is our fault. We set out (in the past 8-10 years) to fight
the propaganda that Ecstasy was some safe, love drug," Ontario's
Deputy Chief Coroner Dr. Jim Cairns, said. "But make no mistake, there
are no safe levels of cocaine. If I had to take one, given the choice
of drugs, I would take Ecstasy every single time."

At a recent semi-formal gathering at a North Toronto banquet hall,
lineups went out both bathrooms as people waited to pull out their
baggies of cocaine.

"It's the only way I get through something like this," said one
25-year-old man.

Matt understands both the lure and the peril. In Grade 9, an older
student handed him a container and said: "Hey, try this."

"It was energizing, it was like being hyper-energetic, you could
instantly feel being up, awake, alert," Matt said. "I kept doing it,
you do coke constantly. My goal on many days was to do coke."

Matt stopped going to school.

"In my first year of high school I had 392 skips, I will always
remember that number," he said. "I had a 26% average."

Cocaine was easy for Matt to hide. It didn't smell, or cause the red
eyes or slurred speech associated with other drugs.

"That's part of the appeal at school," he said.

There is little doubt among RCMP officials and cocaine dealers who
talked to The Toronto Sun that much of the increased supply in recent
years is at least partially tied to the increase in Canada's marijuana
production. Some of the country's cops have even suggested potent
home-grown is selling for the same price as cocaine, and that it is
traded for it, "pound for pound."

"That is just insane, I mean whoever would make that deal would have
to have a gun pointed to their head," said one Toronto man who sells
and grows marijuana, adding if marijuana is being traded it would
likely be for 3:1.

The cocaine is arriving here in planes arriving from the Caribbean and
transport trucks driving in from California, according to U.S. and
Canadian border reports.

In 1998, the Canada Border Services Agency seized 160, 116 grams then
valued at $32 million in the GTA. Last year, the agency seized 729,575
grams valued at $91 million.

Adlaf said the drug's popularity will only be curtailed when people
start talking about it again and when others like Matt start sharing
their stories.

When Matt disappeared on his cocaine binge back in Grade 10 no one in
his desperate family could find him. They filed a police report. It
was no help.

When he finally came home, after the hugs and the tears, his mother
told him he would either die or end up in jail. Matt decided to go to
a youth rehabilitation centre where he spent two years repairing
himself. Since being released in 2002, he has stayed away from
cocaine, rebuilt his life with his parents and is out to share his
message.

"I see kids snorting coke at lunch and I know what they are thinking,"
Matt said. "I know everyone is thinking it looks like fun, that they
can control it. I tell them I'm 19 years old and I'm still in high
school. I tell them I work in a gas station, don't do what I did," he
said.