Pubdate: Tue, 29 Apr 2003
Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC)
Copyright: 2003 The Vancouver Sun
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vancouversun/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/477
Author: Glenn Bohn
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?137 (Needle Exchange)
Note: Faces of Crime Series

WHAT IT COSTS TO FEED THE HABIT

When The People In The Poorest Part Of Canada Have A $140 Million-A-Year 
Drug Craving To Support, The Result Is Theft Across The Urban Area -- 
Stolen Goods That Find Their Way To The Downtown Eastside

A DRUG-CRIME LINK?: Vancouver's Downtown Eastside is legendary as a source 
of drug-related property crime.

The small office of one of the largest needle distribution centres in North 
America faces Vancouver provincial court at 222 Main, B.C.'s highest-volume 
provincial court.

Each year, the Downtown Eastside Youth Activities Society gives out 3.5 
million hypodermic needles to heroin and other injection drug users.

John Turvey, the society's executive director and a former B.C. government 
social worker who has worked in the Downtown Eastside for a quarter of a 
century, offers some simple math when asked about the extent to which 
illegal drugs are drivers of crime:

Each addict uses a needle an average of two times. A dose of heroin or 
cocaine costs about $10, or $20 of illicit drugs for each needle given out.

That's $70 million worth of injection drugs annually. And Turvey says the 
figure should be doubled to $140 million to include smokable drugs like 
crack cocaine, the short-acting stimulant that quickly leads to addictions 
that cost hundreds of dollars a day.

"And here's where it really turns into black humour," Turvey says. "It's 
all taking place in the poorest postal code in Canada.

"We've created an environment that's thriving off the economics of drugs. 
And the goods being stolen from your community -- in Surrey, Delta, White 
Rock, New Westminster -- are being sold in our community, sold for money 
and drugs. If it ain't nailed down, it will find legs."

The drug connection and how it fuels property crime is one of the keys to 
crime being examined in The Vancouver Sun's major series, Crime and 
Consequence.

According to the Vancouver Board of Trade, the total annual cost of 
property crime for city residents appears to be in the range of $50 million 
to $100 million. These drug-related crimes add an estimated $150 to the 
annual cost of a person's household insurance policy and a further $150 to 
the cost of auto insurance, a Board of Trade policy paper states.

Staff Sergeant Chuck Doucette of the RCMP's drug awareness unit says the 
national police force doesn't estimate how much money is spent on illicit 
drugs in B.C. But he says there's no doubt a lot of illegally obtained 
money is involved -- especially when thieves typically get 25 cents or less 
on the dollar for stolen goods.

Fewer than five per cent of the 491,150 alleged crimes reported in B.C. 
last year directly involved drug possession or drug trafficking.

But neither police nor prosecutors have record-keeping systems that measure 
how many other reported crimes or criminal charges are drug-related -- the 
crimes committed by people with a history of substance abuse; the crimes 
committed while someone is under the influence of drugs or alcohol; the 
property crimes committed by drug addicts; or the crimes of violence 
committed during a dispute over drug money or turf.

A study that tried to quantify those crimes was released two years ago by 
the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, a non-profit organization created 
by Parliament. The study was based on information that police in 26 
Canadian communities recorded after arresting 2,675 people during one month.

According to the police officers who participated in that study, more than 
53 per cent of the people arrested were under the influence of alcohol or 
drugs at the time of the offence. One-third of those arrested were judged 
by the arresting officers to be under the influence of alcohol; 10 per cent 
were said to be under the influence of drugs; 10 per cent were under the 
influence of alcohol and drugs.

Doucette says "a good 80 per cent of our calls are related to substance 
abuse, one way or the other," but concedes he doesn't have study findings 
to prove his point.

"That's just based on my experience," he says. "I've been a cop for 31 years."

At Vancouver provincial court, a sheriff winces when an accused fishes out 
five packaged hypodermic needles from a duffel bag, but it's not an 
unexpected or unusual disclosure on Skid Road. The accused is waved through 
a metal detection unit; the bag and the needles remain with the sheriff 
while the accused is in court.

About 25 per cent of the 106,500 court files initiated at that court in 
2001 were for violations of federal laws -- mostly drug trafficking and 
drug possession.

But Carol Baird Ellan, chief judge of the provincial court of B.C., says 
most defendants at 222 Main are either under the influence while they 
commit a crime, are committing a crime to obtain money for their 
addictions, or have a history of substance abuse.

"Any judge at Main Street could tell you that probably 90 per cent of them 
[the court cases] are ones that have alcohol or drugs as a factor," says 
Baird Ellan, a former prosecutor.

"It's probably a bit naive to say that drugs or alcohol, either as 
addictions or factors, cause crime. It's a much larger issue than that. You 
have to look behind, to what causes a person to be substance addicted or to 
abuse the substance. And I think you'll find that, at Main Street, more 
than any other place, there's a consistent pattern in the background of the 
offenders, as a result of which they have become substance abusers and/or 
addicts."

Deb Mearns, coordinator of the Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood Safety 
Office, says "at least" 80 per cent of the crimes committed there are drug 
and alcohol-related. She says local businesses often don't bother to report 
property crimes to police, figuring there's little chance the property will 
be recovered, so she believes crime statistics don't reflect reality.

The non-profit service, which focuses on high-risk youth, recently moved 
its storefront office to 47 West Cordova, across the street from the Army & 
Navy department store. A computer hard drive in the office is bolted to the 
floor but Mearns says the office, like other Downtown Eastside businesses, 
can't get insurance because property theft in the neighbourhood is rampant.

Mearns says police and city officials should be devoting more time and 
staff to enforcing existing laws against city-licensed businesses, like 
24-hour stores, pawn shops, hotels and pubs.

On the sidewalks, people hawk everything from televisions to skis. A few 
years ago, police arrested someone selling grenade launchers. Mearns says a 
buyer can find "anything" they want.

"I had one guy come in one day with bottles of Canadian Springs Water from 
a truck," she says. "It's done very brazenly. In the last two years, I've 
never seen it as bad out there."

About 16,000 people live in the Downtown Eastside, but as reports from 
police and social agencies have pointed out, many drug users and dealers 
are from other neighbourhoods and cities, and they only visit the area to 
buy or sell drugs or to fence stolen goods.

A 1996 criminology study at Simon Fraser University found that almost 50 
per cent of the crimes reported to the 911 emergency communications service 
occurred within 750 metres of a SkyTrain station.

The 2001 bus strike offered another telling anecdote about regional crime 
patterns. During the strike, when only West Vancouver blue buses were 
running, West Vancouver police reported a sudden increase of crimes at Park 
Royal shopping mall businesses and residential neighbourhoods. Plainclothes 
police would follow disembarking bus riders -- most of them known by police 
to be intravenous drug users -- and arrest them as they shoplifted or broke 
into cars or houses.

Recently, West Vancouver Police Sergeant Phil Fontaine says police have 
noticed a jump in the number of methamphetamine users who steal in Surrey, 
Vancouver and other communities. They drive to West Van to steal things 
from cars in Park Royal parkades before stealing another car for the return 
trip home. ICBC statistics show that thefts from autos doubled in West Van 
last year.

In January, for example, West Van police recovered a stolen car that 
contained five licence plates, stolen property and evidence of 
methamphetamine use.

"We're suffering the effects of drugs that are being abused in the Downtown 
Eastside, because a lot of criminals are coming here to commit their crimes 
and feed their habit," Fontaine says.

No police agency provides precise figures of the number of injection drug 
users in the Downtown Eastside and Greater Vancouver, but some estimates 
are offered in an annual report that tries to measure the public health 
problems faced by injection drug users in major Canadian cities.

The report, titled Vancouver Drug Use Epidemiology 2001, was prepared by 
Dr. Mark McLean, an associate medical health officer with the Vancouver 
Coastal Health Authority.

The report estimates there are 4,700 injection drug users in the Downtown 
Eastside and 12,000 in Greater Vancouver. In other words, more than 50 per 
cent of the addicts don't live in Vancouver's poorest neighbourhood.

Overdose deaths also show that injection drugs aren't just an inner-city 
problem. In 2001, there were 90 overdose deaths in Vancouver but 222 across 
B.C., from Surrey to Nanaimo, from Prince George to New Westminster.

Although the report focuses on illicit drug users, it notes that alcohol 
causes more deaths in B.C. From 1990 to 2000, there were an average of 281 
deaths related to alcohol each year, compared with 134 deaths each year 
from illicit drugs.

Another snapshot of drug users comes from the Vancouver Injection Drug User 
Study, or VIDUS, a study of 1,400 addicts being conducted by the B.C. 
Centre of Excellence in HIV -- the potentially-lethal, blood-transmitted 
virus that spreads when addicts share needles. Since the start of the study 
in 1996, more than 100 participants have died, mostly from drug overdoses, 
accidents and suicide.

The drug users in the study are mostly men (65 per cent) and Caucasian (62 
per cent), with ages ranging from 15 to 58. Many of the women (39 per cent) 
are aboriginal.

About three-quarters have been in prison. Almost two thirds are welfare 
recipients, and the report pointed to what happens on the street on 
"welfare day," the last Wednesday of the month when social assistance 
cheques are given out."It has been found that handling money appears to 
function as a trigger for substance users to take drugs," the report states.

When addicts run out of money, they do what they need to do to pay for 
their habits.

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SYNOPSIS: ADDICTION:

It may be the poorest postal code in Canada, but Vancouver's Downtown 
Eastside is host to a $140-million industry. Unfortunately it's the illicit 
drug industry, and much of the money addicts spend on what they need is 
harvested from the unsuspecting residents of other Lower Mainland communities.

FURTHER READING:

Canadian Community Epidemiology Network on Drug Use, a project by federal, 
provincial and community agencies. Produces annual drug and public health 
profiles of Vancouver and 10 other cities.

http://ccsa.ca/ccendu/index.htm

The Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, a national agency established in 
1988 by an act of Parliament. Promotes informed debate on substance abuse 
issues and encourages public participation in reducing the harm associated 
with drug abuse.

ww.ccsa.ca

The Kaiser Foundation's mission is to assist communities in preventing and 
reducing the harm associated with problem substance use and addictive 
behaviour. Its Web site includes a directory of addiction services in B.C. 
and information about substance abuse.

www.kaiserfoundation.ca

World Drug Report, by the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime 
Prevention, Oxford University Press: New York, 2000.

Cannabis: Our Position For a Canadian Public Policy: Report of the Senate 
Special Committee on Illegal Drugs, Chairman Pierre Claude Nolin, Sept. 
2002, Queen's Printer, Ottawa.

The Impact of Drug Enforcement on Crime: An Investigation of the 
Opportunity Cost of Police Resources, by Bruce L. Benson, Ian Sebastian 
Leburn, David W. Rasmussen, Journal of Drug Issues, 31 (4) Fall 2001, pp. 
989-1006.

Winning the War on Drugs: A 'Second Chance' For Nonviolent Drug Offenders, 
by Kwame J. Manley, Harvard Law Review, Vol. 113:1485, April 2000, pp. 
1485-1502.

CRIME FEEDBACK:

As The Vancouver Sun continues publishing its Faces of Crime series, we 
would welcome any thoughts or observations you have on the topic.

LETTERS: Include name, municipal residence and daytime phone number. 
Maximum length is 200 words. Writers whose letters are being considered for 
publication will be contacted. Send to: Crime, c/o Wendy Nordvik-Carr, The 
Vancouver Sun, 1-200 Granville Street, Vancouver, B.C. V6C 3N3.

E-MAIL: (no attachments.)

FAX: 604-605-2522.

PHONE: 604-605-2188.

Web site: To review current and archived articles in The Vancouver Sun 
crime series go to Canada.com and use Searchword: Crime and Consequence.

Ran with fact boxes "Synopsis: Addiction", "Crime Feedback" and "Further 
Reading", which has been appended to the end of the story.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom