Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - December 21, 1991, Winnipeg, Manitoba In free december the addicts and the cops most of us dont Winnipeg is hungry for cocaine its no longer indulgence for Rich Only by Randy Turner staff reporter along Way from the coca plantations of the Snow is gently and Steve Brown is talking about co its the drug of Choice in a Large percent age of the population Brown sit thus Downto Wil of the its expanded into a lot larger Seg ment of the and there is nothing i see right now that gives me a lot of optimism there will be a sudden change in the direction we Are How popular is cocaine in the great White North in Winnipeg City police seized a grand total of one Gram of one Gram barely enough to turn on one user for one by a bust at a West Kildonan Resi Dence last month netted police a 10kilogram ten thousand Grams plenty enough to turn on the whole City and still have a Little left Over for a White the record seizure proved what Winnipeg vice officers had Long but never proven this unassuming Prairie City has quietly developed a booming cocaine right now cocaine is the number one drug in the Winnipeg police vice Bisp Ray Johns that the top priority because its so there is no definite but the 10kilo Gram bust represents just a fraction of the cocaine which regularity comes into win police suspect they get their hands on about 10 per cent of the drugs entering win maybe its a Good eyeopener there is that volume of cocaine coming into the said the divisions undercover drug Coor theres nothing like a Little Shock treatment to get Peoples the next stage is to show that want a City police have so far seized almost Mil lion in illicit drugs this year a staggering increase Over the in drugs they seized in this is not a one or two kilogram town much less one All of a this you see More Coke a lot Johns we heard rumours it was coining in Sev 10kilo the reason for the escalation in cocaine sales is simple suppl Side the Price of the drug has dropped considerably since the a Gram Cut to 30 per cent pure can be purchased for about on the More High Quality cocaine fetches anywhere Between and a downmarket at one it was the drug of the its no longer Johns most of your prostitutes now Are on most of the Trade is concentrated in beverage rooms of downtown and people have drug hous you can go right up to the door if they know you can buy it right out of the it used to be expensive and hard to get five years Art a Clini Cal psychologist at the alcohol foundation of its like Twenty years Only a few people had its the Law of Supply and some recovering addicts will even Tell you its just As easy to score cocaine As marijuana in and police dont argue the youd probably find an ounce of cocaine As fast As youd find a Pound of Brown so How did Winnipeg get such a cocaine habit the 10kilogram bust the individuals who sell the drug have largely been successful in their when Brown left Winnipeg in 1982 for a seven year stint in Ottawa there were Only a few cocaine and they were Small it didst take me any time at All to become familiar with the main organizations said who returned in the ounce dealers when i left in 1982 Are now the Pound dealers of what surprised me was the sophistication and the level of organization that some of these people had theres a hardcore group of individuals in the City who bankroll and bring the stuff Johns there responsible for bring ing it cocaine into the City in Large Quanti some of them Are some of them Are Street people with Good connect the upper Echelon of the a lot of up until virtually considered themselves now they know there but there very difficult to it May take us a year to get one to get it takes More More manpower and More it is easier to get cocaine than funds for drug enforcement in this in there Are fewer officers in the drug unit of the Winnipeg vice squad now than in and ramp resources Are recent court decisions tightening wire tap restrictions and the use of informants have also handcuffed Brown it is december in the Snow is still coming Down and the forecast is for continued crack House May be a sign of ills to come by Randy Turner staff reporter Hole in nose explains mysterious death by Randy Turner and Alexandra Paul it was an unexplained death and it Trou bled seven Oaks general Hospital Emer gency nurse Roseanne then at a nursing lecture on cocaine Addic the a healthy Young Man would die of massive cardiac arrest was cleared former intensive care nurse Sonja Musto told Johnston and other nurses that chronic cocaine addicts share a special ing cocaine often Burns a telltale Hole in the Barrier Between the two you could almost see the Light go on in Johnstons he had that fewer people Are dying from cocaine but that Only because addicts Are getting better at using the doctors according to statistics from the medical examiners six people died As a result of cocaine overdose in while three deaths in 1989 were attributed to cocaine there were no reported deaths resulting from cocaine overdose last but provincial chief medical examiner Peter Markesteyn warns the Lack of fatalities Doest mean the drug is fading just because people dont die of it Doest mean there int an increase in Markes ten people Are More aware of the Dan Gers of the there Are less people dying now from air plane crashes than in but people Are flying its safer to Fly Laurie director of chemical withdrawal unit of health sciences said More and More cocaine users Are ending up at the even patients we get with other primary drugs who dabble in cocaine that has in usage 3oo in Winnipeg 400 creased he a lot of cocaine related he add have resulted from Low income users switching from Talwin and ritalin the old drug of Choice amongst pimps and prostitutes to cocaine and doctors that Seda Tives and marijuana remain the real culprits in terms of drug use in alcohol is still number Hoeschen if you want to put it on a scale of 1 to they Are 8 or cocaine is said she remembers the doctor pointing out the Hole in the Young mans nose after attempts to resuscitate him he was a Young with two Small Chil Dren and a Nice Johnston he was Well dressed and an office he came in with mysterious Chest pains one in hed suffered a major heart at so bad that monitors showed he had heartbeat at yet he had no history of heart disease and he was under age it was such a Johnston when you have an unexplained death like that you feel so frustrated because you know you cant do anything for Winnipeg hospitals dont routinely Check suspicious respiratory and neurological cases for drug said another nothing suggests that knowing about drug addiction would save Peoples in some people Lack an liver enzyme that can mean instantaneous death when they first get in the first hit can be so that the heart is literally blown Musto gesturing at a slide in her presentation that showed an addicts heart with a Hole exploded through its the Wall of the heart she said to murmured gasps from her autopsies wont necessarily uncover co Caine unless its specifically but the signs Are Musto Musto didst suggest autopsies Start look ing for cocaine in unexplained Musto also stressed that the typical addict is More Likely to be relatively Selloff and according to american sur Veys of the estimated million cocaine and crack addicts South of the the people to watch for Are healthy Young businessmen like Johnstons patient who come into emergency departments with Chest a Hole in the i spent everything i earned on drugs by Randy Turner troys voice is deep and he is 20 years but sounds twice that no just As he talks about the Day he nearly i Troy of the second last time he injected cocaine into his i was whacking injecting doing twice As much As i usually i think i was really going on a suicide mis my life had fallen apart from underneath i really didst want to go Troy nearly got his seconds later my heart was beating really my lungs kind of i i did think at that time i was going to in the Troy was his who also used the drug shot him up with valium to slow his heart he survived the ride to the emergency but doctors knew this Stop was Only delaying the my arms were covered in track they were covered in bruises and the veins were the doctors told me if i tent doing it would be the Troy is a cocaine and if you think he is Anab erratum in this fair think again of Manitoba off cats predict the number of cocaine related admissions will jump 67 per cent from 1988 to Troy is one of those he first began taking cocaine intravenously two years once you and youre into i can guarantee youll get he acid it does its damage its easy to Tell a you lose you become there Are bags under your you do kind of look like a Zombie if youre really into Troy broke into houses to feed his a Day it never bothered him a he once attacked one of his Best a and stole his Money All in the name of family suffers every minute of the Day is the getting and using and finding ways and Means to get More said another recovering and work your life your family but youre just worried about getting Ive spent everything Ive earned on never saved a went in addicts interviewed said they were lured by the availability and sex Appeal of theres some kind of fantasy set up sur rounding Jeff not his real name the world Ness about the the when youre doing cocaine you feel like youre an elite kind of people would Call me a drug addict and id be the 25yearold at least there was one thing that j was Good the House looks abandoned from the but As soon As youre let in the Side its barricaded behind you with chains and then you go through a second which is also there is no Quick Way out youve just stepped inside the Only known crack House Ever established at least to police to the there is a living room area where drug addicts smoke on the in the crack cocaine is being and pieces Are broken off and vacuum for take a few More Steps straight and youre standing on a Small dance there is even a music Booth in the far left at the same House doubles As a booze and theres no Lack of the sparsely furnished Home is crawling with hookers and youre talking about an entirely different subculture of said a Winnipeg vice who helped bust the Mcgee Street House in they Are people that sleep during the Day and come out at matter of time there have been no reports of another crack House since Mcgee was shut but police Are its Only a matter of on the crack is a rare but that Doest mean theres not a problem with the highly addictive drug for some strange Don t like buying rocks crack because they want to know whats going into so they bake up their the undercover vice of who cannot be by cooking thereby getting rid of the users Are left with a solid White when the crack pro Vides users with a More intense and its highly Ive had informants Tell me once youre on the youre the vice officer its its the drug of it Chews people up and spits them its hard to believe its the same some of them look like the walking they dont have any color in their with cocaine use in the City skyrocket police realize the Mcgee Street crack House will not be the i can see it More readily available on the streets in the the vice officer said crack houses will pop sure till get worse in this till get worse before it gets we could use twice As Many people As we have Here the vice officer As far Asim everything revolves around Guys do break and enters to buy Guys do holdups to get Small time Market hookers do tricks to get and drug deals gone bad Lead to assaults and compared to major cities like Montreal and Winnipeg is a Small time crack Only two Grams of crack were seized by City police in but those figures to not necessarily appease to who openly admit they Only bag a Frac Tion of the cocaine and crack circulating in the As for As More and More of the addicts Start experimenting in it has to in Winnipeg vice Ray Johns whether were going to end up with crack houses that they have in other major cities such As that what were Irvine to provincial Coroner Peter Markesteyn said crack use will inevitably become More of a problem Here because there is Only a passing awareness of the its like an Markesteyn it starts with a few then it then education programs kick in because people become aware its then it most people Are not even aware its around in it is More economical for Deal ers to traffic in crack than in powder cocaine for Worth of he could make noted Gary pro Fessor of pharmaceuticals and therapeutics at the University of its far More cos effective for the the same amount of powder even when stepped on adulterated a few might Only be Worth to the Glavine no hardcore say Winnipeg has a reputation of shying away from hardcore i Hope that we will avoid being overtaken with we have so added ramp Steve head of Winnipeg undercover drug we tend to stay away from drugs that have caught on in other like Angel but in scared of crack because of what it can it s so easy and so cheap compared to anything but its so its like a once its in and gets in the hands of a few people you cant stamp it it spreads so if we get our first commercial crack its a bad times to ;