Pubdate: Sun, 10 Nov 2002
Source: Victoria Times-Colonist (CN BC)
Copyright: 2002 Times Colonist
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/victoria/timescolonist/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/481
Author: Jody Paterson
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?137 (Needle Exchange)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?136 (Methadone)

DRUGS AND SEX NEEDLE FERNWOOD NEIGHBOURS

The trouble started a few months ago. All of a sudden, dirty needles were 
turning up by the dozens in Fernwood and furtive couplings were being 
spotted in strange places as a burgeoning sex trade took hold in the 
residential neighbourhood.

Creole Carmichael, whose Princess Avenue home is in the middle of it all, 
knew things had changed when her teenage son was solicited one day near the 
Belfry Theatre while on a driving lesson. Her neighbour Vida Waltz tells a 
grimly amusing story of following a trail of lingerie in the playground of 
George Jay elementary to a little pile of three used condoms.

The most recent stories are of children finding needles in the sandboxes of 
local playgrounds, and of a rising number of petty thefts. Neighbours 
aren't sure who to blame, but they suspect it has to do with the new 
tenants living at two weary-looking apartment buil-dings on Spring and 
Ridge roads.

Fernwood is proud of being "a bit of a hippie neighbourhood," stresses 
Carmichael.

It's not a place that gets uptight easily, which is why residents never 
took issue with the owner of the buildings back when the apartments tended 
to attract "potheads."

But the tenants aren't just potheads any more. And as Victoria council 
learned when angry residents arrived at a meeting last month with hundreds 
of discarded syringes, used condoms and needle wrappers from their 
neighbourhood, funky Fernwood isn't feeling quite so tolerant these days.

"Addiction is an illness, and being a smoker, I can empathize," says Waltz. 
"But it's the crime that comes along with it that's the problem."

The manager of the Holiday Court Motel knows the Fernwood newcomers well. 
For a number of years, they lived at the motel he runs on Hillside Avenue, 
until he squeezed the last of them out this summer amid mounting pressure 
from his own neighbours.

The loose collection of drug traffickers and users, bound together by their 
addictions to methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin, first drifted to Speed 
Street across from Mayfair Mall. But when a demolition crew of fed-up 
neighbours forced them out soon after by tearing their house apart, they 
relocated to two apartment buildings across from the Fernwood Community Centre.

Discarded syringes began piling up soon after. Then came the influx of drug 
couriers, the teenage boys who shuttle drugs to buyers by bicycle. 
Injection-drug use was suddenly so prevalent in the neighbourhood that the 
community centre had to start locking its washrooms to keep people from 
using them to inject.

"I walked by a park the other day and there was two prostitutes working at 
the gate and a guy on a bench waiting for his drugs to be delivered," says 
Carmichael. "I thought: Is this my neighbourhood?"

It hasn't helped that the city's social services have been concentrated in 
the Fernwood area, says Carmichael. There's a methadone clinic and an AIDS 
support group on the main street, she notes, and now the city's needle 
exchange has relocated on Fernwood's border.

"The last straw was the detox centre," she says, referring to the Pemberton 
House facility that recently opened in the old youth custody centre on 
Pembroke Street. "They didn't even consult us on that."

Waltz sees the problem as just more evidence of the folly of Canadian drug 
laws, and Fernwood as just the latest neighbourhood to bear the pain.

"They need to decriminalize the whole thing so people can buy their drugs 
at a safe-injection site," she says. "They have to put the dealers out of 
business."

The recent problems have little to do with the 10-year-old methadone clinic 
on Fernwood Road, which doesn't dispense drugs and operates more as a 
counselling and referral centre. But manager Brian Oswald is feeling the 
heat nonetheless as tense residents look around for someone to blame.

"It's definitely causing some problems for us, this being an election 
year," says Oswald. "And sure, we've got two or three clients who might 
cause some trouble. But most people don't even know we're here."

Oswald noticed a sharp increase in the number of discarded syringes in the 
area around February. The mood in Fernwood has gradually grown uglier as 
the problem has worsened, but Oswald doubts that anything will be solved by 
simply forcing the addicts into a new neighbourhood.

"These people are suffering," Oswald says. "Nobody likes being wired. Half 
the people using heroin stopped getting high years ago."

Inderjit Gill, who owns the two apartment buildings at the centre of the 
storm, didn't return a call for comment.

But Carmichael says the elderly Gordon Head man has received death threats 
from a competing drug gang demanding that he evict the new arrivals in his 
Fernwood apartments before the gang's sales are affected. So he was 
reportedly happy to accept a Fernwood resident's recent offer to act as 
property manager for the sites.

Several eviction notices have since been issued. Police and city bylaw 
enforcement officers are also working with the community to help the 
landlord regain control over his buildings, says Victoria Police Insp. Bill 
Naughton.

None of it will do much beyond shifting the problem to another 
neighbourhood, everybody concedes. But at least it won't be Fernwood's 
problem any more.
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D