Pubdate: Thu, 23 Jun 2005
Source: Regina Leader-Post (CN SN)
Copyright: 2005 The Leader-Post Ltd.
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/regina/leaderpost/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/361
Author: Daphne Bramham
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)
Note: Bramham writes for the Vancouver Sun.

OTTAWA NEEDS TO ACT ON CRYSTAL METH PROBLEM

VANCOUVER -- Experts are still uncertain exactly how addictive 
crystal methamphetamine is, how much long-term brain damage the drug 
does or even how long-lasting its effects are.

But ask Vancouver police, emergency room workers, crisis centre 
employees and youth workers about it, and they'll tell you that the 
cheap and readily available drug is creating a whole subculture of 
paranoid, violent and dangerous people out on our streets.

Crystal meth is a problem that began in Western Canada and is 
spreading quickly eastward, although the folks in Ottawa don't seem 
to be fully aware of it.

That's what was so important about the meeting on crystal meth held 
recently in Regina.

At the meeting, Western health ministers urged a range of actions 
aimed at curbing meth use, starting with Justice Minister Irwin 
Cotler increasing penalties for crystal meth possession and 
trafficking. Currently, meth is deemed to be less dangerous than marijuana.

Equally important was their plea that Health Canada monitor 
end-products from the bulk sales of meth's precursors, ephedrine and 
pseudoephedrine.

That bid for better monitoring, however, was largely overlooked in 
the reporting of the meeting that tended to focus more on local 
initiatives to limit the number of cold and allergy medicine packets 
drugstores can sell to individuals. These initiatives follow similar 
ones in the United States.

Those measures can't hurt in Canada. But the situation here is very 
different and begs for national action. Here, meth is big business 
run by organized crime.

Canada's meth supply doesn't come from people fiddling around with 
store-bought blister packs. Here, in all 40 of the labs found by RCMP 
in the past couple of years, the meth makers were either scooping 
ephedrine powder out of five-gallon pails or pseudoephedrine tablets 
out of huge boxes that were purchased wholesale.

So, while laws limiting the sale of cold medicines in drugstores 
might make it more difficult for minor manufacturers, it will 
scarcely put a dent in the over-all Canadian production.

Health Canada has regulations governing the bulk sales of ephedrine 
and pseudoephedrine. But nobody is following up with inspections or 
audits to determine what those bulk buyers are manufacturing and, all 
too often, it seems they're making meth.

There is also no monitoring of the end-products manufactured by bulk 
buyers of some of the other chemicals that make up crystal meth -- 
products like acetone, isopropyl alcohol, iodine, starter fluid, 
methanol, ether, sulfuric acid, lithium batteries, rock salt and lye.

Not surprisingly, RCMP have found that meth manufacturers are very 
creative. Some set up fake cleaning companies and arrange to buy bulk 
chemicals that they say are used to mix up their own cleaning solvents.

Clearly, monitoring is not a job for a lone, unarmed health 
inspector. So, the government also needs to figure out which law 
enforcement agency is best equipped to work with those inspectors 
before it sends them out.

Once Ottawa plugs those holes in its regulation, what RCMP and other 
experts expect is that smaller Mom-and-Pop operations will spring up 
to meet the demand with retail drugstores being the primary source of 
active ingredients.

It's then that provincial regulations or local initiatives to get 
small retailers to limit sales of over-the-counter cold remedies and 
household chemicals will need to be fully in place. Because if 
over-the-counter limits aren't in place, experts paint a bleak 
picture of what Canadians could face, based on what is happening in the U.S.

There, police have uncovered tens of thousands of small meth labs. 
Many are literally run by parents out of family homes in otherwise 
quiet neighbourhoods, cooking up meth using cold medicine from the 
local drugstore and other chemicals readily available at the local 
hardware outlet. These home labs are often toxic waste sites or 
extreme fire hazards.

Worse, at many of the U.S. labs police have found children who are 
either drug-addicted or neglected -- some to the point of near 
starvation, since the meth-addicted parents feel no urge to eat or sleep.

Because of that, in many American cities and counties, busting a meth 
lab means sending in teams that include not only police, hazardous 
waste disposal experts and firefighters, but forensic psychologists 
and social workers.

The western ministers' case for better regulation and controls was 
damaged when experts admitted that their report had vastly 
over-estimated the number of current meth users. But while the use of 
crystal meth may not be in epidemic proportions yet, that shouldn't 
deter federal politicians from acting quickly.

Stuck in the details was this rather chilling statistic. In B.C., 7.3 
per cent of drug users said they had tried meth. While that's a lot 
fewer than those who admitted using cocaine, nearly three-quarters of 
those who had tried meth did so in the last year.

What that means is that the problem is new and growing. It means it 
will only get worse if nothing is done to limit supply, while 
concurrently trying to reduce demand through education.
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MAP posted-by: Beth