COCAINE BINGE

Action Required

Editorials - The signs that cocaine use was on the rise were out there. It
appears we just weren't paying attention.

Or, as city police Sgt. Tim Farquharson more bluntly puts it, most people
just don't have a clue.

Now we do. The first clue came this week the medical officer of health, Dr.
Garry Humphreys, asked the board of health to more than quadruple its
donation to a needle exchange program. Instead of $1,500, the program
needed $6,600.

The increase, Humphreys said, reflects a high demand for needles by users
injecting cocaine into their veins.

"It would appear we're having a real problem with cocaine here in our
community," he told the health board.

Police officers like Farquharson, a former member of the Kawartha Combined
Drug Forces Unit, and city police drug investigator Det. Chris Robertson,
have seen the problem developing over the past few years. They say cocaine
is now widely available and relatively cheap. Anyone with an interest can
buy enough to get high for $40 to $60.

Current statistics on cocaine use are difficult to come by. The most recent
United Nations report on world drug use estimates that 0.7 per cent of
Canadians are users. That figure also appears in much of the most recent
literature, which tends to use statistics from the late 1990s.

However, one of the longest running and most complete Canadian surveys
measures drug use by Ontario students. The Ontario Student Drug Use survey
has been conducted biannually by the Centre for Addiction and Mental
Health. It shows that cocaine use by students in grades 7 through 13 peaked
in 1979 at 5.1 per cent, then fell slowly but steadily to 1.5 per cent in
1993. Since then the trend has been higher and higher. In 2001, 3.8 per
cent of students were using cocaine.

Based on local police observations and the fact that the number of visits
to the needle exchange jumped to 1,827 last year from 493 in 2000, it is
fair to say the student trend is also reflected in the general population.

So what to do about it?

Combating drug use is difficult, and never wholly successful. The
popularity of any one drug tends to run in cycles (cocaine was the drug of
choice of high rollers in the late 1970s and early 1980s) which means it
eventually declines on its own. However, something as addictive and
destructive as cocaine can do far too much damage in a short period for
society to simply wait it out.

The war on cocaine - as declared by successive U.S. administrations - has
been particularly frustrating. Cocaine use in the U.S. was nearly five
times as prevalent as in Canada in 1999, according the the UN's World Drug
Report, so the Americans have a vested interest in breaking the cycle. But
as fast as they curtail the supply in one area it is replaced in another.
Potential production from the coca harvest in Peru dropped from 421 tonnes
in 1994 to 175 tonnes in 1999; during the same time Colombian output
increased to 520 tonnes from 201.

The recent change in Colombia's government may have a positive effect, but
Canada would be further ahead to focus more effort on cutting off the
supply chain that feeds the drug to this country - primarily organized
crime and motorcycle gangs.

The RCMP should also be devoting more resources to anti-cocaine operations
in smaller communities like Peterborough, working with local police.

Programs in elementary and high schools, and at Fleming College and Trent
University that make clear the dangers of cocaine use may also help. One
reason drug use is cyclical is that once enough recreational users reach
the addiction stage, stories about how their lives fall apart circulate on
the streets and in the media. Those horror stories help make the party
crowd think twice about stepping up to harder drugs like cocaine.

If that message gets across in the schools before we return to the Miami
Vice era, perhaps the trip can be derailed.