Pubdate: Thu, 10 Nov 2005
Source: Georgia Straight, The (CN BC)
Copyright: 2005 The Georgia Straight
Contact:  http://www.straight.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1084
Author: dee hon

CONFRONTING CRYSTAL METH

The first time the government took Cookie into foster care, he was a 
baby, just six months old. By the time Cookie had reached his eighth 
birthday, he had been bounced between 15 different foster homes and 
his home with his mother. She was an alcoholic, deemed unfit to care 
for her child. She died when he was 11. Cookie started running away 
from foster care at nine years old. He's been living on his own since 
he was 13. Now at 24 years old, Cookie says he thinks he's 12 but 
feels like he's 86.

You can earn a PhD in eight or nine years, including an undergraduate 
degree. Cookie has spent the past 11 years living on the streets of 
Victoria and Vancouver, and he's been getting schooled about drugs 
for the past 14. So it would be fair to say Cookie knows a lot about 
the latest "it" drug, crystal meth, and what it's doing to people on 
Vancouver's streets. He started smoking cigarettes and pot when he 
was 10 years old; he did LSD at 11. He's been using meth for the past 
five or six years.

Cookie asked to be identified only by his street name. He hasn't 
touched meth for a week.

About meth, Cookie said: "It'll swallow somebody's soul."

But methamphetamine is consuming more than just souls these days. 
Campaigning politicians fill the airwaves, pledging millions of 
taxpayer dollars for anti-meth campaigns. Police departments are 
pouring money and manpower into busting meth labs. And the story of 
meth is chewing through forests worth of paper in publications across 
North America.

What is this monster we're said to be facing? And what can be done to 
keep people from its maws? An ounce of prevention, the cliche tells 
us, is worth a pound of cure. Research published in the Journal of 
Drug Education in 1995 estimated a $15 savings for every dollar spent 
on drug-abuse prevention.

Battle lines are being drawn under the banner of stopping meth abuse. 
It's become a major plank in several parties' platforms for the 
municipal elections on November 19. Some say it's an epidemic that 
must be eradicated with education and enforcement. Others urge a 
broader perspective--they say meth's popularity is a symptom of 
greater ills. The crux of the issue centres on the drug's very nature 
and the reasons why people use or abuse it.

Methamphetamine, as its name implies, is a member of the amphetamine 
class of stimulants. The "meth" refers to an additional methyl group 
(one carbon atom and three hydrogen atoms) attached to the 
amphetamine molecule. The methyl group makes the drug more 
fat-soluble and thus facilitates entry to the brain.

First synthesized in 1919 by a Japanese researcher, meth is known by 
various names. On the street it's called speed, jib, crank, ice, or 
crystal. Doctors prescribe the drug to kids with attention deficit 
disorder under the brand name Desoxyn. Over the decades, it has also 
been widely used to help soldiers fight or to help people control 
their weight. Like its chemical cousins cocaine, amphetamine, and 
Ritalin, chronic use of meth at high doses can lead to a 
schizophrenia-like psychosis.

Gord Robson's voice is thick with urgency as he describes the threat 
posed by crystal meth today. The Maple Ridge businessman and mayoral 
candidate leads the Rotary Club--funded Crystal Meth Task Force in his town.

"It's an epidemic that's sweeping through our society," he said. "My 
God, 10 percent of kids in high school are taking the drug. That's scary."

Robson said meth is uniquely addictive--that just one hit can lead a 
person down the road to addiction and ruin. He warns that B.C. could 
become like places in the U.S. where, he claimed, a third of some 
towns' populations are addicts.

In Vancouver, municipal candidates are scrapping over the battle on 
meth. One civic party, the NPA, pledged anti-meth education for 
students in Grade 4 and up, as well as a controlled-substances act. 
"It's a big problem. It could explode in the city," NPA mayoral 
candidate Sam Sullivan told the Georgia Straight. He said meth is a 
drug in a class of its own.

Sullivan's opponent, Vision Vancouver's Jim Green, said the NPA is 
overhyping meth and that alcohol causes far greater problems. Green 
wants to see the city address the broader issues that can lead people 
to addiction. He said people need alternatives if they are to stay 
away from drugs. "We need to allow our youth to blossom and flower."

Senior levels of government have joined the fray. This fall, the 
federal government announced stiffer penalties for meth production 
and funding for prevention programs. The B.C. government announced in 
September a $7-million package aimed at fighting the drug.

"[Crystal meth] is probably the most dangerous drug out there," B.C. 
Solicitor General John Les told the Straight. "This is not about harm 
reduction. It's about harm elimination."

Many warnings are dire, but the available statistics present a more 
optimistic picture. Survey data from B.C. and the U.S. show the 
number of teens who have tried amphetamines has declined since the late 1990s.

Vancouver's McCreary Centre 2003 Adolescent Health Survey showed a 
slight decrease in amphetamine use for B.C. teens. Five percent of 
teens surveyed in 1998 said they had tried amphetamines at some point 
in their lives, compared to four percent in 2003. In Vancouver, the 
number was even lower. Only two percent of Vancouver teens surveyed 
in 2003 said they had tried amphetamines at least once.

And the 10 percent figure for teenage meth use quoted by Robson? That 
number looks less grim upon closer inspection. That figure was drawn 
from a Surrey school-board survey and has since been regularly quoted 
in the media. The survey asked Surrey students whether they had used 
meth during the previous year. Nine percent answered yes. However, it 
would be a leap to conclude that all of those kids in Surrey are 
regular users, and American research indicates that meth isn't as 
instantaneously addictive as many have suggested.

The U.S. government's National Survey on Drug Use and Health found 
that about five percent of those who had sampled meth at any time in 
their lives could be described as addicts. For that, the researchers 
defined an addict as anyone who had used the drug within the previous 
month, a commonly used, albeit broad, definition.

Using the same criterion, the U.S. survey showed that 60 percent of 
people who had tried alcohol in their lives could be called addicts. 
Twenty-seven percent said they had gone on a binge in the past 
month--that they had had more than five drinks at one sitting. 
Applying the same standard to other drugs, the addiction rates for 
cigarettes (37 percent), marijuana (15 percent), painkillers (10 
percent), and crack cocaine (eight percent) were all higher than that 
for meth. Heroin, at three percent, ranks lower.

Applying that American five-percent meth-addiction rate to the 
McCreary survey data (two-percent having tried amphetamines) would 
suggest that 99.9 percent of Vancouver teens are not addicted to 
meth. Indeed, a report released this June by the Canadian Community 
Epidemiology Network on Drug Use (CCENDU) showed that although 13.2 
percent of Vancouverites had tried LSD, heroin, or speed in their 
lifetime, only 1.3 percent had used any of those drugs in the past year.

The lesson from this is that for most people, using meth can be, and 
is, an occasional or one-time affair. Whether you're looking at meth 
or any other drug, there is a spectrum of greys between abstinence 
and the blackness of addiction.

Sadly, for a minority of people, addiction is a real and nightmarish 
problem. From a prevention standpoint, the logical question is why?

Ongoing research suggests that some personality types are more 
susceptible to addiction than others. People who are more antisocial 
or who are risk-taking sensation-seekers are thought to be more 
likely to try and later abuse illicit drugs. Researchers are even 
finding genetic clues indicating that some people can handle alcohol 
and drugs better than others.

But evidence is emerging that social factors can play an overwhelming 
role in determining a person's risk of addiction, possibly even 
rendering such biomedical arguments moot. In other words, it's not 
the differences between drugs or people's temperaments toward drugs 
that matter most but how people choose to deal with the different 
environments they face.

One clue that supports this is how drug use is clustered among 
certain groups of people. According to the McCreary data, the vast 
majority of Vancouver teens--some 98 percent--say they have never 
tried methamphetamines. But for those living on the city's streets, 
that figure is almost reversed. According to the CCENDU study, 71 
percent of street-involved youth say they have tried amphetamines. 
Fifty-seven percent say they've used it more than 10 times.

So what is it about life on the city's streets that makes meth so 
much more alluring? Robert Weppler works for the Vancouver Coastal 
Health Authority as a coordinator of a peer-support program for 
addicted street youth. The number-one drug of choice on the street, 
he said, is pot. But although weed may be enjoyable, it makes users 
hungry and lethargic. Street kids use meth when they need the opposite effect.

"It almost seems designed for street life," Weppler said of meth. 
Meth helps street kids survive.

Just as dieters use amphetamines to ward off hunger, street youths 
take meth. And just as some students use meth or other stimulants to 
aid their all-nighters, homeless kids use them to stay awake and 
protect themselves from theft or worse.

"Every time I fell asleep," Cookie said, "I woke up with less stuff 
than I had. I just got tired of sleeping and tried to stay awake as 
long as I could."

Meth doesn't make a user stoned or impaired like hallucinogens, 
alcohol, or pot. Some research indicates that meth can actually 
slightly improve a person's cognitive ability on simple tasks. Meth, 
or Desoxyn, is still prescribed to treat ADD. In other words, meth 
can help street kids get things done.

But the poison, as toxicologists like to say, is in the dose. 
Prescribed daily doses of methamphetamines--to children as young as 
six--range between 2.5 milligrams to 60 milligrams. Meth abusers 
typically take 100 to 1,000 milligrams a day, and they sometimes 
binge on as much as 5,000 milligrams, or five grams. Chronic use of 
amphetamines at such high doses can lead to a psychotic state 
indistinguishable from schizophrenia. That psychosis can sometimes be 
irreversible.

Sometimes, street kids use meth because there's nothing else to do. 
Meth's unique allure is that it's cheap, available, and long-lasting. 
As little as $5 can sometimes buy you a point (0.1 grams). Meth can 
produce an eight-hour high. The buzz from crack cocaine can last as 
little as a few minutes. That's why meth users rarely turn to crack 
as an alternative.

If you look at drug abuse as a disease, then you assume that drugs 
are the controlling factor. Therefore, the theory goes, people have 
little choice in how they use. But that doesn't seem to be the case. 
People usually have good reasons why they choose and use the drugs 
they do. People pop Prozac to ward off depression. People drink to 
lose their inhibitions. And as Weppler and Cookie described, street 
kids use meth to deal with life on the street.

"If you have a good relationship with drugs, you use them in ways 
that help you," said Donald MacPherson, the drug-policy coordinator 
for the City of Vancouver and author of the city's prevention report. 
But sometimes that relationship can sour.

MacPherson said a person who has a supportive network of friends, 
family, and community is less likely to abuse drugs. Such support can 
help make a person more resilient to stress and change. Abuse, 
poverty, homelessness, and alienation can all contribute to a 
person's risk of addiction. Yet these very factors are usually 
overlooked in anti-drug campaigns.

Transition periods in people's lives are when they are at most risk, 
according to MacPherson. Changing schools or jobs or homes are all 
events that can help trigger a slide into addiction. So can the end 
of a personal relationship.

It's not that such events are necessarily overwhelming, although 
sometimes that's the case. It's just that people behave differently 
in different contexts.

Many people try smoking in their teens, but few of those teenagers 
smoke a pack a day. It's after graduation and in the transition to 
their twenties when many casual-but-regular smokers turn into 
full-blown addicts. "Retirement is one time you just hit the booze," 
MacPherson said. Many seniors leave the workforce only to find 
themselves bored and then pick up problems with alcohol or gambling.

Cookie started using more meth after he broke up with his girlfriend. 
"I started getting into it more because there was nothing else to 
do," he said. Meth became a habit and then escalated into a problem.

Despite the many correlations between risk factors and abuse, it's 
still impossible to reliably predict which individuals will have a 
problem with drugs and why. Probably the best we can do is support 
initiatives that keep people connected to one another and minimize 
the harms caused by abuse and poverty.

When confronted with the issue of meth abuse, the public response has 
been to cry out for more education and enforcement. Governments, 
always sensitive to public pressure, have been eager to respond, 
directing resources particularly toward those two avenues.

The B.C government announced this September a $3-million 
public-awareness campaign to combat meth. One million will go to 
school-based programs; the rest will be spent in a mass-media effort. 
The federal government bumped up the maximum penalty for trafficking 
in meth to life in prison. Vancouver's NPA pledged childhood 
anti-meth education and stricter control of meth-making chemicals.

But of all the tools that can be applied toward drug-abuse 
prevention, education and enforcement may be the least effective. In 
the case of early drug education, it may even be counterproductive.

Several studies, including one conducted by University of Illinois 
researchers in 1998, found that kids who went through the popular 
elementary school--level Drug Abuse Resistance Education program 
(DARE) "had significantly higher levels of drug use" than kids who 
didn't. It seems that far from teaching kids about the dangers of 
drugs, the abstinence-based program may, in fact, have increased 
kids' interest in drugs.

And education-based prevention programs assume that people try 
illicit drugs only because they are unaware of the risks. But there 
is scant evidence available to back that premise.

"We should give people the information to make good choices," said 
Dan Reist, director of the communications and research branch of the 
University of Victoria's Centre for Addictions Research. "But if we 
think that giving people information will in and of itself change 
behaviour, we're dreaming."

And Reist believes that students don't buy the "just say no--or die" 
message. He said most students inclined to try drugs know people who 
have used drugs safely.

"They're going to say, 'It's a con job,'?" Reist said. "And they're 
right. It is a con job."

John Blatherwick is Vancouver's chief medical health officer. He said 
any plan that relies on teenagers to make rational decisions is 
doomed from the start. "The part of the brain that determines good 
judgment doesn't develop until last," he said, adding that he thinks 
brains probably mature at about age 25.

Experimentation is a natural part of being a teenager, as is taking 
risks. Even the most credible teachers are powerless to change that. 
"You have to understand that's how the brain works," Blatherwick 
said. What's important, he added, is minimizing the risk that 
experimentation will lead to harm.

In theory, enforcement should be an effective prevention measure if 
it could diminish drug availability or drive up costs. But has 
enforcement been able to accomplish either? "I would say not," said 
the RCMP's drug-awareness coordinator, Scott Rintoul. He said meth is 
largely as cheap and plentiful as ever.

Rintoul is worried an American trend could cross the border: meth 
producers there have adapted to police busts on bigger labs and 
limits to sales of meth's "precursor" materials, or ingredients. 
Hundreds of smaller labs have sprouted up to take the bigger labs' place.

The result, Rintoul said, could be more dangerous drugs hitting the 
streets. Smaller labs tend to have poorly skilled drug makers. 
Decreased supplies of materials may lead to a switch to more harmful ones.

Cookie shares the same warning. "It'll just make the drugs dirtier," he said.

But if education and enforcement have limited effectiveness in 
preventing harm from drug abuse, what should be done instead? 
"Controlling price and access to drugs is far more effective than 
education," UVic's Reist said.

Price controls in the form of taxation have changed how much people 
smoke or drink. Regulating who can smoke and where and when has 
helped send smoking into decline, according to Reist. But illegal 
drugs sold on the black market are out of government hands.

Numerous groups, including the Health Officers Council of British 
Columbia, the Centre for Addictions Research of BC, the City of 
Vancouver, and the Fraser Institute, have all issued a call for a 
regulated, legal drug market for currently illicit substances. The 
hope is to find a middle ground between illegal black markets and 
laissez-faire sale of heavily marketed drugs like alcohol and tobacco.

The debate over drug prohibition will not likely be settled soon. But 
our knowledge about risk factors tells us that there is plenty that 
can be done right now.

Bruce Alexander, a Simon Fraser University professor emeritus of 
psychology, believes we need to take a broader look at the issue of 
addiction. "It's a much more holistic approach that we need," he said 
during an interview at his home. Alexander believes that addiction is 
the natural result in a society where the bonds of community are 
increasingly being severed.

MacPherson feels that much good can result from sound government 
social policies. "We need to grapple with the inequities in society," he said.

If factors like abuse, poverty, and homelessness can put people at 
risk of abuse, then tackling these issues should, obviously, become 
preventive strategies. And if strong family and social bonds help 
make people more resilient, then, equally obviously, governments 
should invest in measures that encourage them.

Yet many government programs that address these issues have been 
scaled back in recent years. The effects could be felt on the 
streets. "It got chaotic," Cookie said. "A lot of the services didn't 
know what to do."

SFU's Alexander said that as a psychologist, there's little use in 
taking away an addict's drugs if you don't address what first got him 
addicted. "I can't cure him, because what do I have to offer him?" he asked.

Things are looking up for Cookie. He's learned a lot over the past 
few years and he's putting his smarts to good use. He works as a peer 
counselor with Crystal Clear, a group where he supports his fellow 
meth users. He said the experience has changed his whole outlook. His 
work helps give users a sense of community that's usually absent. He 
helps them to keep safe.

Crystal Clear is what's called a "low-barrier" group. Members don't 
have to have kicked their habits in order to join. People who take a 
dose to fight withdrawal symptoms can still participate, so long as 
they're functional and committed to work. It means there's still a 
door open for them while they're working to change their habits.

"With Crystal Clear, I can help all the people I see having 
problems," Cookie said. "A lot of them will listen to me. They take 
to what I say."

His work is helping him find a better life as well as helping others.

"In order to get somebody off of drugs, if they really want to get 
off it, you just got to find something to consume their time better 
than drugs," he said.
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MAP posted-by: Beth