CRAVING CRYSTAL METH

Their names aren't as important as the horrific story they have to tell
about a dangerous new drug and the plight of a little girl living among
helpless addicts in a local drug house she called home.

Located directly across the street from a high school, the dilapidated
half-duplex turned drug den was recently closed down, much to the delight
of neighbours who would often wonder about the steady stream of strangers.

After being ousted by their landlord, the husband-and-wife dealers have set
up shop in another local rental, this time beside an elementary school in
the heart of a quiet family-oriented neighbourhood.

Two local teens recently shared their story with The Richmond Review after
having lived inside the former drug house for months, hopelessly hooked to
"crystal meth" (methamphetamine hydrochloride) a drug that's as addictive
as cocaine and heroin. It is fast becoming the drug of choice because its
high last hours, it's cheap and is easily manufactured.

Also known as "ice" and "glass," this drug comes in chunky crystals and is
cooked up in clandestine labs. It is closely related to amphetamines but
has far greater effects on the central nervous system and brain, causing
paranoia, hallucinations and violent rages.

According to a Lower Mainland survey done by Pacific Community Resources in
2002, nearly one in five youths between 12 and 25 years old had tried the drug.

After a "friend" got Mike (not his real name) started, he found himself
smoking and snorting crystal non-stop for months, which left him lost in a
euphoric haze where all that mattered was snorting as he was slouched
round-the-clock on a couch in this stinking house that was littered with
blood-soaked rags, moulded-over food and infested with insects.

Despite the stomach-churning conditions, all that mattered to Mike was the
drugs.

"It lasts all night you can't sleep," he said, explaining the hours-long
high that would follow inhaling the fumes from a melted rock of crystal
that's placed inside a glass pipe and held to a lighter.

The perpetual cycle between rush, the indescribable high, the daze-like
journey down and the overpowering craving meant he couldn't sleep for two
or three day stretches at a time.

Dozens of regulars visited the house every week, exchanging stolen goods
like bikes, CDs, electronics and even furniture for a gram of crystal,
which sells for about $40 on the streets and comes in tiny transparent
zip-locked pouches. Some of the stolen goods sat in heaps piled at the side
and back of this house, near Charles E. London Secondary, hinting at what
was happening inside.

Many of the regulars, some in their early teens, were allowed to stay in
the house by the couple who sold the crystal and smoked it in front of
their elementary-school aged daughter, a pudgy and precocious brown-haired
girl who copped an attitude but was never seen dabbling in drugs.

Though they saw her everyday, and on occasion drove her to her nearby
school, the teens couldn't remember the girl's name.

What they do remember is the horrors she was forced to witnesses in a house
that wouldn't look out of place inside a shanty town.

"They do it in front of her," Mike said of the couple's use of drugs in
front of their daughter, who slept in a room directly across the hall from
her parents, who when they weren't smoking crystal were having sex, the
only two types of high that would satisfy the craving created by crystal use.

Dave (not his real name) was just 16 and swore to himself he would never do
this type of thing before he began his descent.

"I was totally against this stuff and then I thought I'd try it. I thought
it was just a high like weed," something he said he'd often done before.

But he was wrong. After trying it just once, he found himself a slave to
the drug.

"At first, it was just a couple lines and the high would last the whole day."

A $100 bag of crystal once lasted a week; now Dave found it disappeared in
a few hours. Before he knew it, he found himself living in the house for
months, never going home or worrying about his family, not concerned with
eating or sleeping, no different from a zombie. He was trapped, unable to
help himself, let alone the teenaged strangers who lay beside him.

"The sight of food made me sick," he said, recalling how a friend once
force-fed him.

He recalls one horrifying incident in which a girl, who had been shooting
heroin, was sexually assaulted as she lay unconscious on the floor. He
recalls seeing one of the older male addicts threaten to do the same to an
addicted teenage girl, who was so frightened and became so paranoid she
kept smoking crystal just so she wouldn't fall asleep.

And then there was the time the mother of an 11-year-old autistic boy
seemingly died after doing drugs and had to be revived (like a scene
straight out of Pulp Fiction) while her son sat oblivious, in another room.

The images are burned in his memory.

Those who were new to the drug were easily distinguished from the long-time
users, who sported grotesque scabs on their gaunt faces, the result of
toxins oozing out of their skin. Rags were used to soak up blood from those
addicts who couldn't keep from picking at their owns scabs or scratching at
their skin because of bugs that may or may not have been there.

Day and night in the house became virtually indistinguishable. But despite
the sense of timelessness there did appear to be a routine. Dave said the
couple would cycle through the neighbourhood, dive into dumpsters,
searching any conceivable spot for money, or to steal goods they could
exchange for money.

Those who needed to score would steal anything that wasn't fastened down
from friends and family, doing whatever it took to land one of those
precious plastic pouches. Dave, too, stole from friends, exchanging the
goods for cash at a pawn shop near city hall.

"I never thought so many kids did speed," Dave said, recalling the 13- and
14-year-old boys and girls he'd met and came to know by their first names.

If it hadn't been for a friend who pulled him out, Dave has no doubt he
would still be inside that dimly lit house.

"I don't want that house to be there anymore," Dave said a short time
before his wish came true. "It's killing kids. It's definitely an unfit
place to raise a kid."

Today, Dave and Mike are free of their addictions, clean for the past few
months and back in touch with their families. They both successfully
completed rehab at a detox facility and started school again in September.

But the horrors of what they saw isn't something they'll soon forget.

"Every now and again I'll crave it," Dave said frankly from his father's
home as he fiddled with a piece of paper. But then he remembers the toll
the drugs took. "All that stuff did was cause me trouble...

"Each kid that is going in there is killing themselves. You try it once and
you'll like the high so much. It's really fun but it's not the right thing
to do. You're putting poisons in your body," he said in a lecture-like
tone, as if he was trying to convince himself and fight off another craving.

"I just don't want any kids to go through what I had to go through."

Said Mike: "Don't get into it. You'll lose your friends and your family."

RCMP Cpl. Scott Rintoul, a drug awareness co-ordinator, said teens with no
intention of trying crystal meth are becoming addicted.

Of a large sample of drugs seized this year that claimed to be pure
ecstasy, 65 per cent also contained methamphetamine. That's up from 50 per
cent last year and an indication that more teens are being exposed to the
highly addictive drug.

Rintoul said a number of Lower Mainland communities have a methamphetamine
problem, which he says is overtaking cocaine because it provides "so much
more of a high" and is "much cheaper."

Unlike cocaine and heroin, meth doesn't have to be imported, he said,
making it readily available. And unlike marijuana, which requires large
amounts of space and electricity to produce, crystal meth can be cooked up
in a bathroom or kitchen.

"The difference here is that this is something that can be produced
domestically."

When contacted by The Richmond Review in June, the owner of the house
professed no knowledge it was being used by drug dealers and their clients.

But after being alerted, the landlord quickly took action and gave the
dealers the boot.

"I felt that was my duty," he said recently.

The Richmond RCMP conducted an investigation, and saw evidence that
supported the story told by the two teens, but were unable to obtain a
search warrant before the dealers disappeared.

(On one warm summer afternoon, The Richmond Review observed a couple of
vehicles pull up and then leave after short visits, including a four-door
import, sporting a Washington state license plate. The young driver of this
sedan opened his trunk, pulled out a cardboard box and walked it into the
house, repeatedly looking over his shoulder as he walked up the steps
leading to the front door. In Washington state, the problem of crystal meth
use is exploding, as is the number of illegal drug labs police are finding
on the interstate highway corridor that leads from Mexico to Canada.)

The Ministry for Children and Families was also contacted about the young
girl, but a ministry spokesperson said privacy laws prevent them from
commenting on what, if any, action the ministry took.

Sources say the girl wasn't seen entering or leaving the home in the weeks
before the drug house closed down, leading to speculation she may be
staying with other relatives.

The City of Richmond was also contacted in June about the mounds of junk at
the side and back of the house and indicated it would take steps to enforce
related city bylaws. A city spokesperson said the city had received
complaints about this property before.

With the tenants now gone, the landlord has promised to clean the place up
by next week. It will be a welcome sight to neighbours and a relief to two
former drug addicts who are quick to point out that the problem hasn't
disappeared, it's just moved on.