Pubdate: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 Source: Calgary Sun, The (CN AB) Copyright: 2000 The Calgary Sun Contact: 2615 12 Street N.E., Calgary, Alberta T2E 7W9 Fax: (403) 250-4180 Website: http://www.canoe.ca/CalgarySun/ Forum: http://www.canoe.ca/Chat/home.html Author: Don Braid HARD LOOK AT HARD DRUGS The 16-year-old we'll call Fred just shrugs when I ask him about cocaine at his school. "Sure, I could get cocaine," he says outside his southwest senior high. "It's no problem. You ask a few people and before long, you have a name, and then you just buy from that person -- cocaine or anything else you want." Fred is like the other kids I talked to yesterday -- he doesn't need drugs or want them. But, Fred knows that drugs from marijuana to cocaine and beyond are nearly as available as drinks from the school pop machine, although a lot more expensive. As I wrote yesterday, city police say cocaine is now being sold by pushers to junior high students. Although they haven't yet made arrests or seized the drug at the junior high level, they have solid intelligence it's happening. This comes as a shock to adults, but most high school students are surprised there's any fuss at all. It's easy to see how hard drugs have started to filter into the junior highs. Fred's school is just down the street from a junior high, and there are many such close pairings all over the city. For the pushers who work around high schools, the junior highs are handy satellite markets, full of little prospects ready to be indoctrinated. I don't blame the schools for any of this. They get the problem -- and often the rap -- because they happen to be the places where our kids gather every day. Both boards work hard to keep the schools drug-free, but you get the feeling that the bad guys are winning through sheer force of numbers. At the public board, an ex-police officer named George Veenhuysen is in charge of all security, including drugs, for more than 90,000 students. He and the board depend heavily on city police officers in schools. And there's yet another bureaucratic layer -- the downtown police drug squad. "We have a very good working relationship," says Veenhuysen. But the board wasn't aware that police now say there's cocaine in the junior highs. Very often, reports on marijuana drug busts in the schools aren't even passed on to board security. Veenhuysen says: "Any illicit drug use is serious, of course, although I'm not too surprised any more when it comes to a marijuana bust at a school. But I am very very concerned about the issue of hard drugs like cocaine in our schools. "If this is really true about cocaine, there's major cause for concern." He says students can be sure of confidentiality if they report suspected drug-selling to school officials. A fine idea, but I suspect it will happen about the same time the pushers start turning over their proceeds to charity. What we really need are more police, and more George Veenhuysens, to tackle a growing problem. The other side of the drug culture is violence -- and we're in for plenty if hard drugs ever take deep root around schools. - --- MAP posted-by: Derek Rea