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COMMUNITY PROBLEM REQUIRES COMMUNITY ACTION

Tammy Verigin-Burk isn't into scare tactics.  The Freedom Quest youth addiction services director isn't about to tell people to lock their doors because crystal meth addicts are everywhere.  Should Castlegar as a community, however, fail to address Verigin-Burk's concerns about youth addiction, locking doors could become a necessity by default.

Verigin-Burk voiced her concerns about local youth drug addiction at the monthly meeting of the Castlegar RCMP Community Consultative Group.  Concerned that youth drug use is increasing, she expressed a greater concern with the drugs being used, the aggressive and violent behaviour they have precipitated and their correlation to crime.

"A lot of these people are out doing crimes, especially the B&Es and car thefts," said Verigin-Burk.

Rationalizing with these young addicts is difficult, she noted.  They don't see what they are doing as bad, because at the time they are doing whatever they can to get the money to buy the drugs to supply habits.  They may feel remorse the next day when they realize they have broken into Gramma's house or friend's house and stolen stuff.  But that remorse is quickly replaced by the need to score another fix.  "They go out and do another crime and use again.

"I'm not saying that's what all the crime is, but I definitely have a lot of clients that are the ones causing a lot of the problems around the community."

Those problems are compounded by behaviours elicited by the use of drugs like Percocet or crystal meth.  "It's violent and aggressive behaviour," said Verigin-Burk, likening the drug rush to the adrenaline rush of someone faced with a life and death situation, who finds the strength to lift a car off a trapped child.  "That's the way people are when they are on crystal meth.  They feel they are invincible, and they have this unbelievable strength."

But that strength tends to be used in an aggressive way.  "The violence that happens around town, where someone hits someone with a pipe, the more abnormal stuff, there's crystal meth, Percocet or something like that involved," said Verigin-Burk.

She added, too, that the violence is more random.  Where non-drug related aggression might be directed at someone known to the aggressor, drug use causes irrational behaviour and less discriminating acts of violence.

Violence is a concern, but so too is the decreasing age of users.  "We're seeing younger and younger ones coming through our door," said Verigin-Burk, "12 and 13 year olds engaged in heavy crack use." Where "gateway" drugs used to happen first, with pot smoking and drinking occurring initially, now it is not uncommon for users to go right to Ecstasy or crystal meth.  "They're just going for the heavy stuff."

With a "bit of a lull" in crystal meth use locally, problems have not abated.  Prescription drugs like morphine, Demerol and Percocet have become popular - and easily available.  Terminally ill people have loosely monitored and almost endless supplies of these drugs, and young addicts seem to have a knack for tracking down these individuals, Verigin-Burk noted.

"It's the loving grandson that comes to visit, and grabs a bunch of pills.  They are open prescriptions, monitoring isn't the same as with someone who isn't terminally ill."

But while the drug supply seems almost endless, the hours available to help young addicts is in limited supply.

"The reality is that we have 10 addiction ( counselling ) hours for the community which is not near enough, absolutely not near enough," said Verigin-Burk.  She added that youth addiction services have always been under-funded compared to adult services.  Yet if more services were provided to youth, undoubtedly fewer services would be needed down the road for adults - with reduced program costs and accompanying reductions in crime.

"We're flooded right now," she said.  "We're packed to the max with people who are coming looking for support and assistance."

Pressed to provide day services, residential treatment isn't an option at all.  Local residential care is not available and the wait for placement in the provincial program is seven to eight months.  "That's one of our stumbling blocks.  Some youth really need to be removed from their environment because their use is so heavy.  We have no place to put them for residential treatment.  There are very few options in B.C."

As for Castlegar's options, education and public awareness is key, said Verigin-Burk: people need to know what's going on.  She noted how parents have come to her saying their kids have more information than they do.  "We don't have a clue.  How are we supposed to do anything about it if we don't know what's going on?

"Knowledge does give you some advantage."

Knowing that crystal meth is often smoked using glass from broken light bulbs, parents might have their suspicions tweaked should light bulbs start disappearing around the house.

"It's a very serious situation in Castlegar -there are a lot of young people having some very serious drug problems here," said Verigin-Burk.

And the community needs to come together to deal with those problems.