Synthetic Heroin Prescribed To Users, Who Can't Tell The Difference Injection drug users cannot distinguish between heroin and a legal substitute, according to a Canadian clinical study released on Friday. The North American Opiate Medication Initiative (NAOMI) study tested the effect of prescribing opiates to addicts in Vancouver and Montreal. Though the study was not specifically designed to test the legal opiate hydromorphone as a treatment for addiction, study representative Julie Schneiderman said they had enough clinical evidence to begin prescribing the drug. While no proposal has yet been put forward, Schneiderman said study organizers had begun looking for funding to open a clinic. [continues 422 words]
The Laval police department failed, miserably, to provide its officers with the training and support they need to do their jobs properly. As a tragic result, Constable Daniel Tessier was killed on March 2, 2007, and a fellow officer wounded, in a raid on a private home. This week the provincial workplace health-and-safety board hammered that message home: Daniel Tessier would still be alive if he or his fellow officers had acted more prudently, notably by checking the provincial gun registry before raiding the Brossard home of Basil Parasiris. The suspected drug dealer, whose wife and children were in the home at the time of the raid, said later he thought he was being attacked by home invaders. [continues 298 words]
Aftermath Of Botched Drug Raid. Thorough Gun-Registry Check Could Have Saved Life Of Investigator Slain In Brossard Home, Agency Says A thorough check of the gun registry before Laval police carried out a botched drug raid could have spared the life of Constable Daniel Tessier, the provincial workplace health and safety board says. Tessier was killed on March 2, 2007, after he and a small group of fellow officers stormed a Brossard home. He was fatally shot by Basil Parasiris and another Laval police officer was wounded, but an investigation by the Commission de la sante et de la securite du travail of the incident has determined neither would have been inside the house that morning if they knew Parasiris had a registered firearm. [continues 464 words]
Quebec City police warn they will closely monitor the activities of a cafe that plans to sell marijuana. The operators of Montreal's Compassion Club say they will open a second shop today in the provincial capital to respond to growing demand for "medicinal" marijuana. "We're going to be functioning (in Quebec City) along the same principles that we use at the Montreal location," said Marc-Boris St-Maurice, founder and president of the Compassion Club. The Montreal Compassion Club has about 1,000 members. The club operates in a legal grey zone, selling marijuana to those who have a permit from Health Canada or who have a documented medical need for it. [continues 147 words]
Provincial authorities were slow off the mark at the start of the biker wars that raged across Quebec in the 1990s, leaving 160 people dead in a wave of bombings and shootings. As the ugly phenomenon grew, police forces took a long time to get organized to work together a common target. And Crown prosecutors were so overworked and underfunded that it was a miracle anyone was charged, never mind successfully prosecuted. It was not the province's finest hour. Among other horrors, a 12-year-old, Daniel Desrochers, was killed by car-bomb shrapnel in 1995. And the head of the Hells Angels, Maurice Boucher, was able to stroll out of prison in 1998, acquitted of ordering the killing of two prison guards. [continues 369 words]
Montreal could be in for underworld conflagration Only one question still hangs in the air around the burnt offering that used to be the Hells Angels bunker in Sorel: Will this attack spark another violent gang war? This wasn't just any incendiary attack on a building. It was a strike at the heart of the Hells Angels in Canada, a bid to tear down the central temple of their outlaw biker religion. Their St. Peter's, their Mecca, their Temple Mount all rolled into one ugly, brutish, defiant red and white concrete fortress. [continues 608 words]
Many Hope Fire Is The End Of An Era At the scene of the crime yesterday, residents of this industrial town of 35,000 said they hoped the weekend fire at the Hells Angels bunker spelled the end of the gang's presence here. Mayor Marcel Robert told reporters provincial anti-gang laws and local bylaws prohibit the construction or reconstruction of a fortified bunker without special permit. The mayor stopped short of speculating on whether this means bunkers in Trois Rivieres and Lennoxville will evolve into more important operation centres for the outlaw biker gang. [continues 540 words]
Birthplace of Hells in Canada; Gang members might have burned bunker if they felt it was to be seized: police sources. Police investigating the destruction of the Hells Angels' most important symbol in Canada are not discounting the possibility the gang took a scorched earth policy to their own clubhouse, sources say. The gang's bunker in Sorel, destroyed by arson Saturday night, represents the birthplace of the Hells in Canada. It served as the headquarters for the gang's first chapter in Canada. The Montreal chapter was chartered on Dec. 5, 1977, after members of a Montreal-area biker gang called the Popeyes joined the international gang through the support of a Hells Angels chapter in New York. [continues 540 words]
Mafia Sentencings. Younger Associates Get More Jail Time Nicolo Rizzuto sat through his sentencing hearing with the patient look of a man who knows he'll be sleeping in his own bed for the first time in nearly two years. The octogenarian leaned forward in his chair in the prisoner's dock of the Gouin courthouse yesterday and stared at his hands as Quebec Court Judge Jean-Pierre Bonin essentially rubber-stamped a decision that sources say was made months ago. [continues 604 words]
Nicolo Rizzuto, 84, Gets Suspended Sentence, Probation After Plea Bargain MONTREAL -- He had been described as the patriarch of a Canadian crime clan with tentacles reaching around the world. But only two years after Nicolo Rizzuto was led from his columned mansion and locked up in jail, he is walking away a free man. In a plea bargain, the 84-year-old grandfather and stalwart in one of Canada's most infamous crime families received a suspended sentence yesterday and three years of probation. [continues 571 words]
Crown After Homes, Bank Accounts Of Five Top Criminals The Crown is expected to reveal today what riches will be confiscated from six mob leaders, including Nicolo Rizzuto, as the case against them enters the sentencing stage. Last month, when Rizzuto and the five other reputed leaders of the Montreal Mafia pleaded guilty to charges laid after Project Colisee, prosecutor Yvan Poulin told Quebec Court Judge Jean-Pierre Bonin that confiscations had played a role in the plea-bargaining process. Project Colisee was a Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit investigation into the Rizzuto organization and its involvement in drug smuggling, trafficking and illegal gambling. [continues 298 words]
'We're All Drug Users,' Says Safe Injection Site Adddvocate Safe drug use advocate Gillian Maxwell says substance use shouldn't be so taboo, since we all do it. "We're all drug users," Maxwell said in an interview after her lecture. "Why do we draw lines between people who drink alcohol or people that [use other] mind-altering substances?" Maxwell, the first speaker in the Concordia University Community HIV/AIDS Lecture series, is an advocate for Insite, North America's only authorized safe injection site. Maxwell also mediates Keeping the Door Open, a coalition that works towards creating dialogues on drug use. [continues 231 words]
Afghanistan is going badly. "We're not going to win this war," said a top British general last week. Well, pass the smelling salts. The War on Drugs created Afghanistan's massive illicit drug trade. This trade funds the insurgency, corrupts the government and destabilizes society. But neither the United States nor the United Nations will acknowledge that the War on Drugs is anything less than a roaring success and so they refuse to discuss alternatives to the policy that fuels the whole bloody mess. [continues 850 words]
Harm reduction activist Gillian Maxwell spoke at Concordia last Thursday. Maxwell, who works with several British Columbia lobby groups that have supported the Insite safe injection facility in it's fight to stay open, spoke about community involvement with harm reduction programs as part of the 16 annual Concordia University HIV/AIDS Lecture Series. Maxwell sat down with The Concordian to talk about her work. "The world is totally in agreement about harm reduction because of the spread of HIV. The World Health Organization, the Red Cross, different parts of the United Nations, including the Secretary General are all on record saying harm reduction is essential in order to fight HIV/AIDS, particularly with injection drug users," said Maxwell. [continues 766 words]
Promoter Is Former Alcohol And Drug Addict; His Private Foundation Would Run Program A proposed addiction rehab centre - to be run by a recovering addict who's under indictment on fraud charges and whose brother was shot in August in an attempted underworld hit - came under attack yesterday from neighbours who claimed the centre could attract more crime to the area. About 80 residents of southside Notre Dame de Grace showed up at a public meeting at St. Raymond de Pennafort Church on St. Jacques St. complaining that the centre will worsen the serious drug and alcoholism problems in the neighbourhood. [continues 679 words]
The city of Montreal has toyed with the idea of hosting the second safe-injection site in North America, and the proposal gained steam after an announcement by former Quebec Health Minister Philippe Couillard last June. Unfortunately his replacement, Yves Bolduc, has delayed plans with vague excuses calling for more information and studies. Insite, operating in Vancouver for the past five years, is currently the only safe injection site in North America. Safe injection sites do more than provide shelter for drug users, they turn the drug debate on its head. By shifting the emphasis to health care and medical services, safe injection sites create an important paradigm shift: intravenous drug users are not ingrates or criminals, they are sick. [continues 400 words]
Study After Study Supports Insite's Value, Yet The Tories Want To Shut It Down Insite, the medically supervised injection site in Vancouver's downtown eastside, is a moral test the Conservatives seem determined to fail. As a safe, supervised place for intravenous drug addicts to go, the clinic has saved lives, helped slow down the spread of HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C, provided support to mentally ill or homeless drug addicts, and helped stabilize a large population of addicts in Canada's poorest urban neighbourhood. [continues 669 words]
Re: "Throw the book at them" (Editorial, Sept. 21). While I don't condone the crimes of Mafia members, and I agree that they deserve whatever legal consequences they get, I wonder what will happen on the streets of Montreal without a Mafia presence. Clearly the demand for drugs still exists, and so someone will supply. If it isn't be the mafia, then the opportunity for classless "street thugs" will be ever so present. If we're not going to legalize drugs (not that we should), then I would rather the Mafia take care of it. Kristin Anderson Notre Dame de Grace [end]
Who needed the Sopranos? Montrealers had the real thing right here on our streets, in our cafes and offices - mobsters as large as life. Under the leadership of friends and family of Vito Rizzuto, Canada's most powerful Mafia godfather, they were hustling drugs, and also, according to RCMP affidavits, bribing airport baggage handlers, food-services workers and customs agents to get cocaine shipments through Trudeau Airport. With the guilty pleas of Vito's father, Nicolo Rizzuto, and five others on 21 charges, including drug-trafficking, smuggling, racketeering and extortion, Montrealers have seen how this all worked. Now that these hoodlums have acknowledged their guilt, they must be given stiff sentences. [continues 174 words]
A provincial police officer was shot yesterday during a drug raid on a home in St. Lin Laurentides, about 60 kilometres north of Montreal, police said. The male officer, in his 30s, was seriously wounded in the abdomen and was in stable condition in a hospital, SQ Lt. Francois Dore said. One man, 30, was arrested and was taken in for questioning, Dore said. [end]
Inside Quebec
