Pubdate: Sun, 21 May 2006
Source: Winnipeg Free Press (CN MB)
Copyright: 2006 Winnipeg Free Press
Contact:  http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/502
Author: Bruce Owen

HIGH AND HOPELESS

Legions Of Solvent Abusers In Winnipeg's Core Exist Only To Find 
Their Next Poisonous Fix; The Downtown BIZ Is Taking Steps To Do 
Something About The Problem

Police reporter Bruce Owen and photographer Joe Bryksa spent a few 
days this month on the city's Main Street strip between Higgins and 
Logan. Like all big cities, Winnipeg's core has a substance-abuse 
problem. What's being done?

RUSSELL Sinclair points to the scar around his right eye and says the 
eyeball is plastic.

You'd never know.

He says it was beaten out of him a couple of years ago on the Main 
Street strip in a fight that also left him with a permanent, 
bow-legged limp. He walks with a cane.

Still, the 40-year-old solvent abuser says he feels safe living on 
the street, shuffling from one soup kitchen to the next and sleeping 
at the Main Street Project.

Today begins like almost every other. Some soup and a peanut butter 
sandwich at the Lighthouse Mission and then he's off. He's got five 
bucks in his pocket that'll get him half a plastic "chubby" bottle 
(four ounces) of paint thinner from a bootlegger. "It gets you high," 
says the former Fort Alexander resident in a mumble that's almost 
impossible to understand. "It's like cocaine."

The small bottle of paint thinner and its fumes will last him two 
days, some of it passed out on the street, the odd time ending up in 
the back of an ambulance.

Paint thinner contains toluene, which causes serious nerve damage in 
habitual sniffers like Sinclair.

"Some days I don't know if Russell's dead or alive," Lighthouse 
Mission pastor Scott Miller says as Sinclair heads out the door. "Why 
do people sniff? I think they just want to blot out the reality of 
their existence."

Sinclair's not alone. Anyone who's driven Main Street between Higgins 
and Logan knows this already.

There, on the sidewalk of one of Winnipeg's busiest streets, the 
almost daily display of addiction and hopelessness plays itself out, 
worse on cheque days. That's when social assistance money flows so 
the down-and-out can buy solvents to sniff and two-buck king cans of 
beer to wash it down.

While most Winnipeggers roll up their car window and drive on, people 
like Miller are trying to do something about it.

The biggest initiative is a $300,000 program led by the Downtown BIZ. 
It will put 10 special constables on the street to detain solvent 
abusers and other heavily intoxicated and sometime aggressive people. 
The constables will have the power of arrest under the Intoxicated 
Persons Detention Act. Once off the street, a formal outreach process 
will be initiated to steer some of the solvent abusers to agencies to 
help them dry out and get back on their feet.

"Businesses want to contribute towards a solution," says Downtown BIZ 
executive director Stefano Grande.

Why the program is needed is simple: City police are too busy on more 
serious calls to pick up drunks and passed-out sniffers.

"For Winnipeg police, we're not a priority for them," says Siloam 
Mission director of patron services Dan Ingalls.

Four years ago, the Manitoba government brought in penalties to yank 
the licences of retailers caught knowingly selling intoxicants like 
hair spray and paint thinner to abusers, but only a handful of people 
have so far been prosecuted. One Elgin Street store was back in 
business hours after being raided by police two years ago.

The Manitoba Pharmaceutical Association is also trying to put a dent 
in the problem. It's distributing 4,000 kits to members across the 
province to educate them about the risks of solvent abuse, and the 
role of pharmacies in not selling certain products to abusers.

There are about 3,500 solvent abusers in Manitoba, according to a 
government estimate released in 2002. The numbers don't appear to 
have changed since then.

What has changed is that they've become more visible. In the past, 
they'd hang out in parks, out of sight, but these days they're out on 
the sidewalks, where it's a short walk to the Bell Hotel vendor for 
$2 king cans of beer.

Outside the Lighthouse Mission, help can't come soon enough for these 
people. The only social contact they have is with soup kitchens, the 
Main Street Project, and sometimes, when things go very wrong, city 
paramedics. There is nothing else. A few feet from the tattered blue 
awning of the North Main Development Corp. -- a long-forgotten, 
multimillion-dollar public initiative to revitalize the Main Street 
strip some two decades ago -- two men are standing hunched together 
in the doorway of a derelict building.

One is a bootlegger. He's got a can of paint thinner. He's pouring 
some of it into a small plastic drink bottle held by the other guy. 
He pours slowly so as not to spill. Don't want your profit hitting your shoes.

The guy with the small bottle hands him some cash and stumbles away, 
picking up his buddy slumped against the Salvation Army's Booth 
Centre. He grins when he sees his buddy's bottle and off they go. 
It's 10:25 a.m.

A lot's been said and written about sniffers, drunks and aggressive 
panhandlers in Winnipeg. Some people say the problem only seemed to 
go away during the 1999 Pan Am Games, when the city was centre-stage 
to the world and wanted to put its best face forward.

Miller and others who work in the area's shelters and soup kitchens 
say the area's substance-abuse problem simply mirrors issues of 
poverty and addiction not only in Winnipeg, but across Canada.

John Mohan, executive director of Siloam Mission, says most street 
people are aboriginal, but that is slowly changing. Siloam plans to 
open a 60-bed shelter next year.

"They're younger and whiter," he says. "A lot come from rural areas 
to escape abusive homes. They come here and get caught up in the drug culture."

Mohan says it's similar with aboriginal people. They're fleeing the 
extreme poverty in northern communities and come to the city with 
little education or support. A lot of them end up sniffing solvents 
as it's the cheapest high.

It's also a crippling high. While others can get into emergency 
shelter and soup kitchens, the sniffers often become incapable. They 
tend to wander in pairs or groups down the length of Main Street or 
in the downtown. They sleep where they fall. They're also easy 
victims. Two were murdered in 2001 -- their cases remain unsolved -- 
and another two are on the police long-term missing person's list.

"A lot of them, there is no hope," Henderson says.

"When you start talking to them, they're not bad people," adds 
Donna-Lynn Nelson, a Main Street fixture. She's decked out in a big 
fuzzy blue hat, children's sparkly stickers on her face and too much 
makeup. She's able to strike up a conversation with everyone, 
including two men carrying rags of glue and king cans of beer.

"What you see on the outside is not what these people are on the 
inside," adds a man who calls himself "Helper". He reeks of glue. 
"All of us, we try to help one another in little ways."

Across Main Street at the Lighthouse, pastor Miller says it's an 
uphill battle helping people like Sinclair and Helper off sniff.

"It doesn't happen very often," he says, standing under a Got Jesus? 
banner. "I have to be very careful how I measure success. I can 
preach the gospel when necessary, or I can use words of compassion. 
Sometimes that speaks louder."

How can you help?

The Siloam Mission needs volunteers.

The soup kitchen and drop-in centre at 300 Princess St. needs people 
on a regular basis as it plans to now run seven days a week.

Volunteers are needed for the meal program, officer administration, 
fundraising and to run the clothing bank.

Call Stefanie Ingalls at 956-4344.

For more information, go to Siloam.ca.

Clothing and other donations are also accepted at the Lighthouse 
Mission at 669 Main St.

Call 943-9669 for information
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom