Pubdate: Tue, 17 Mar 2009 Source: Standard Freeholder (Cornwall, CN ON) Copyright: 2009 Osprey Media Group Inc. Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/sRKlJFsP Website: http://www.standard-freeholder.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1169 Note: Previously appeared in the Intelligencer (CN ON) - http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v09/n313/a01.html?1313 Page: 4 UNITED FRONT TO FIGHT CITY'S DRUG TRADE In Belleville, we have the problem and a complex web of solutions and fixes and fixers. We've got drugs, drug users, drug dealers and the police team that runs them down, takes their drugs and puts them in jail. We've got drug counselling and drug treatment programs, methadone clinics and doctors to treat people who use and abuse drugs, but is it enough? Some, like police and merchants we spoke to, don't believe so. Project Longarm started in 2001 and consists of three officers from Belleville plus one officer each from Ontario Provincial Police detachments in Bancroft, Madoc and Picton. There are also two Longarm officers from the OPP Quinte West detachment. Longarm is responsible of taking thousands of dollars in drugs off the street and arresting scores of traffickers. We can be proud of the effort that is largely spearheaded by our own Insp. Mike Graham and it's a feather in local law enforcement cap that we have such a stalwart and stealthy unit on the lookout for drugs and drug sellers. But, while we have impressive law enforcement resources, there's more that needs to be done. Graham said there needs to be more effective laws to deal with drug trafficking. We're sure Graham and his men and women on Longarm see many of the same players in successive busts and investigations. The bottom line seems to be the bottom line - the payoff for running and selling drugs is greater than the threat of whatever the courts will do to offenders. "For every drug dealer we take off the street, there's another one coming in to take his place," said Graham. "That disrupts the trade, it doesn't stop it." Graham said he "support(s) any decision made by the judges," but if legislation allowed harsher penalties for dealers and traffickers, things might change. Cate Sutherland and her counselling staff at the Addictions Centre are doing their part to bring down the number of those dependent on drugs. But the community has to acknowledge a problem exists and work toward ways to stem the tide. "People have stopped caring about people in need," said Katherine Davis, owner of The Organic Underground on Front Street. Maybe she had it right when she suggested we do more to stop the demand for drugs by reaching out to the people who use them. - - Belleville Intelligencer - --- MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart