Pubdate: Fri, 13 May 2011
Source: National Post (Canada)
Copyright: 2011 Canwest Publishing Inc.
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/wEtbT4yU
Website: http://www.nationalpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/286
Author: Joe O'Connor
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?132 (Heroin Overdose)

HEROIN THAT GOES FAR BEYOND JUNK

J.D.'s voice is ragged. It tears from someplace deep inside his 
throat. He says he is sick, and broke. It is 10 a.m. in Kelowna, 
B.C., and the 35-year-old heroin addict is craving his morning fix.

"I've been using for 23 years now," J.D. says.

He knows about the lethal batch of high-potency heroin that has hit 
B.C.'s Lower Mainland. It is killing addicts in alleyways and in 
their beds, in Kelowna, Abbotsford, Chilliwack, Surrey, Burnaby and Vancouver.

But J.D. is not going to stop. He says he is "too far gone," despite 
the 21 heroin-related deaths that have been confirmed in the first 
four months of this year, nearly triple the number than over the same 
stretch in 2010. Police are awaiting toxicology reports from several 
additional cases and believe the toll could climb higher.

Last week, the parade of dead junkies pulled into Kelowna. Two men, 
aged 21 and 24, were found dead in a 36hour span. A family member 
discovered the 21-year-old lying in his bed. Police later learned 
that he had used a small amount of the drug.

"We don't get a lot of overdose fatalities." Kelowna RCMP spokesman 
constable Steve Holmes says. "This is very unusual."

Asian, Latin American and West African criminal gangs control the 
international heroin pipeline. The drugs flow from Asia to Canada on 
large ships, planes, speedboats, snow machines, all-terrain vehicles 
and personal backpacks and suitcases with false bottoms.

"South and Southwest Asia (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, India, and 
Turkey) have dominated the Canadian heroin market since the early 
2000s," a 2009 RCMP report on Canada's illicit-drug situation states. 
"While heroin consumption is reportedly one of the least common forms 
of drug used in Canada, seizures of heroin have been on the increase 
since 2004."

Intercepting the drugs before they reach the streets is a lot easier 
than stemming the flow of a toxic batch of heroin once it is already 
in circulation.

Kelowna's RCMP detachment has petitioned the drug community for help 
in tracking the drugs to their source. There have been no tips, 
anonymous or otherwise.

"When we are talking about the drug community we don't get a huge 
amount of co-operation," Const. Holmes says. "We put out the plea, 
and if people are concerned about their friends, or themselves, then 
please help us find out who is dealing it.

"To my knowledge we haven't had much success getting any definitive 
information that will lead us in a particular direction."

The British Columbia Coroners Service has issued a warning.

"Heroin being dealt to users in some areas is at least twice as 
potent as usual," the coroner advised. "[Users should] never be alone 
when ingesting drugs, and where possible should use available 
community services such as INSITE, or needle exchanges."

INSITE is the province's supervised-injection site in Vancouver's 
downtown east side. There have been 3,000plus overdoses at the 
facility since it opened in 2003. None has resulted in a fatality.

Police, the coroner's office, the provincial government, academic 
studies and two B.C. court rulings have endorsed the program, a 
harm-reduction strategy that was at risk in the Supreme Court of 
Canada on Thursday, where judges heard arguments from federal lawyers 
to shut the clinic.

The federal position is that the facility encourages drug use, and 
that its continued operation could have widespread ramifications for 
the provincial health system. "The state has no constitutional 
obligation to facilitate drug use at a specific location by hardcore 
addicts, the mildly addicted, frequent users or occasional users," 
prosecutors argued in court submissions, although a federal lawyer 
told the court Thursday the Conservative government hasn't decided 
whether it wants to close the facility.

For J.D., the street has been his life and his drug den, first in 
Winnipeg, and then Abbotsford and now Kelowna. J.D.'s girlfriend 
overdosed in November. He shoots up four times a day in a public 
washroom. He is not going to stop.

"I am not scared," he says. "I've been doing this long enough now to 
know that when it is new stuff, I just got to do a lower dose of it.

"But I am out here, on the streets, and what happened last week has 
not slowed the young kids down. It is pretty sad to see. It is their 
friends that passed away, and they pour a couple of drinks out on the 
street during the day when they are talking about them but they still 
turn around and are using.

"It hasn't slowed them down. Heroin doesn't scare them. They think it 
is cool ... Maybe if they could see themselves like I see me, maybe 
they would quit.

"I am so far gone it is not even funny."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom