Pubdate: Mon, 27 Jun 2005
Source: Windsor Star (CN ON)
3f1-6c74-4977-bebd-a9518b1e1d56
Copyright: The Windsor Star 2005
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/windsor/windsorstar/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/501
Author: Daphne Bramham
Note: Daphne Bramham is a Vancouver Sun columnist.

CRYSTAL METH IS A NEW AND GROWING PROBLEM

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 recent meeting in Regina.

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 that have followed 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.

CANADIAN PRODUCTION

Here, meth is big business run by organized crime.

Canada's meth supply doesn't come from people fiddling 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 of out 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. They base it on what is happening in
the U.S.

TOXIC WASTE SITES

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 them 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.

While its use may not be in epidemic proportions yet, that should not deter
our 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 past 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: Josh