Vancouver: 'Drug Central' of North America

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8505061.stm

Vancouver: 'Drug Central' of North America

By Rajesh Mirchandani
BBC News, Vancouver

As Vancouver prepares to host the Winter Olympics, the city continues to struggle with a vicious drugs war. Dozens have been killed in escalating turf battles that have spread far beyond the city limits. But it is a war that has its roots even further away, in Mexico.

It rains a lot in Vancouver, but this city's ambition will not be dampened. Olympic organisers have spent nearly $2bn (US$1.87bn; £1.2bn) to showcase a confident, modern metropolis to the world.

But barely a mile from the gleaming stadium that will host the opening ceremony, there is another Vancouver no-one is proud of.

The Downtown Eastside is a clump of rundown hotels and liquor stores. It is teeming with pushers, pimps and prostitutes, and home to one of the worst drug problems in North America.

"Heroin, crack, pot… every type of drug you want, you can get it here," a man tells me.

"Do you have any pills?" a young woman asks, her red hair starting to drip in the rain. She is looking to buy a $1 valium tablet, because she does not have $10 (£6) for heroin.

"Pretty much everything is $10," I am told. "This is Drug Central."

In a dingy alleyway, I met Shirley, smoking crack behind a dumpster.

She told me she was 40 and had been doing drugs since she was 14. She used to sell her body. Now she "shuffles" - ferries around small amounts of drugs for dealers in exchange for money.

She starts to prepare something called a speedball, heroin mixed with cocaine. She tells me she wants me to see the reality of addiction, but it is difficult to watch.

'Middle-class gangsters'

There are many like Shirley in the Downtown Eastside. They are the lowest rung of a vicious food chain.

Dozens have been killed in Vancouver's drug wars. Police say more than 100 gangs carve up a lucrative trade. And it is a problem that extends far beyond the city limits.

An hour to the east, in the lush Fraser Valley, lies Abbotsford, a town that once offered quiet, middle-class suburbia.

Seventeen-year-old Mathea Sturm walks me past her school gates. Five of her schoolmates died in as many months last year, and the town saw a spate of drug-related killings.

"It's still pretty hard to deal with the fact that we've lost a lot of people," she says. "It was a peaceful town, you could walk around at 11 at night… Then, all of a sudden, all this… it was sort of a big pandemic."

Abbotsford's comfortable homes and neat lawns have spawned a peculiarly middle-class breed of gangster.

The police know who and where they are, they just wait for evidence and the right opportunity.

As I drive along with Pc Marcus Senft, he points out a sizeable house in an upscale cul-de-sac, the home of a notorious crime family.

There are bars on the front door and he tells me the SUV in the driveway sports bullet-proof windows.

"Yeah, there's definitely some fear in this neighbourhood," he says.

On the outskirts of town, we drive to Zero Avenue, the US border.

"There's no fence," Pc Senft says, "just a big field."

Canada and the US share one of the longest land borders in the world. Here, it consists of a ditch, a few feet separating two countries. It looks easy to jump across.

Within minutes of our arrival, a US border guard drives up.

He said he had spotted us on hidden cameras, but admitted it was impossible to stop everyone - or everything - coming over illegally.

Heroin project

Locally-grown marijuana - called "BC bud" - is smuggled south to the US and Mexico. Cocaine and weapons come north.

Mostly it is hidden in lorries, but it also comes across the fields around Abbotsford and other border towns. This porous frontier has become a frontline.

But the war started far away: the escalation in Canada's violence is a result of a crackdown by Mexican authorities on drug gangs there.

"Everything is global now," says Supt Pat Fogarty, of British Columbia's Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, which tackles organised crime in the region.

"When the war started, the cartels were too busy fighting the Mexican government... which caused a breakdown in the distribution lines, so people weren't getting their drugs," he says.

"There would be territorial takeovers, rip-offs, a variety of things that caused tension… If you look at the time in which this disruption occurred in Mexico and the disruption that occurred here, you can see the correlation between the two," he adds.

Against this backdrop, Vancouver is sprucing up and preparing to host the world.

The Olympic Games have brought some regeneration funds to the Downtown Eastside, but Mayor Gregor Robertson insists the city authorities are not glossing over their problems.

"We need to solve them," he told me. "And I think that kind of scrutiny actually puts more pressure on us to fix these problems sooner rather than later."

The mayor supports a controversial project in the Downtown Eastside called InSite, the only place in North America where it is legal to inject heroin.

InSite won a legal exemption, allowing the project to operate. On the ground floor they offer free syringes and a nurse to monitor against overdoses; upstairs, a rehab centre for those who want to quit.

Those running it claim a higher quit-rate than any official programme, and a lower rate of HIV infection through shared needles.

Opponents, and there are many, say it condones drugs use.

It is a highly unusual project in a city known for being progressive. But it is not enough to clean up the Downtown Eastside.

Vancouver's problems will last long after the Olympic spirit has left.
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slimvictor said:
If only drugs were legalized, the power and money from the marijuana and cocaine trades would be taken from the hands of criminals. That would leave the weapons, but the problem would be substantially smaller - maybe one-third or less of the current problem.
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This.

The criminals would be put out of business. Cleaner drugs would be out in the open which would be a major harm reduction for uses. Plus, people like that 40 year old speedball chick could go in and get help from treatment centers (which would cost MUCH less than enforcement) instead of having to hide their problems from the authorities.

Makes too much sense for this bizarro fucking world we live in though. Much better to keep letting people kill each other off while certain people make huge profits.
 
hahah vancouver is the worst place to live sure......
lol @ dozens of deaths
this is soooo lame vancouver is nice as hell
 
Vancouver is pretty mellow as far as violent crime goes. The only people who really have to worry about getting killed are gangbangers.

As far as drugs go this city is saturated with reasonably priced, good quality gear. The drugs and the natural scenery are pretty much all this place has going for it....and the fact that it's the most progressive city in N. America when it comes to harm reduction strategies.

All in all though Vancouver is overrated.
 
Vancouver has a drug problem if you were to compare it to other Canadian cities.

But theres no where near as big if a drug problem compared to alot of US cities .
 
Unless your directly involved in the buying/selling of drugs on a larger than personal scale. You'll be fine.

Pretty much everyone else is fine though. (except for that poor girl who got caught up in some gang crossfire)
 
Honestly, I love Canada and it's progressive attitude. But this story really sensationalizes and over-glorifies the crime/drug problem there. Take for example Baltimore, similar-szied city

Vancouver: Pop ~578,000 - Murders ~20-30 per year
Baltimore: Pop ~650,00 - Murders ~250-300 per year

And you can bet almost all of those were attributed to drugs.
 
I would say Vancouver as a whole prob isnt any worse than alot of Large cities the world over

however the couple of blocks that make up the E. Hastings area is for sure a drug Mecca (if you will)
 
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Yeah exactly, heroin as a whole is a nice place. But the lower east side like there talking about is nothing but drugs,junkies all over sidewalks,run down buildings and hookers, any drug you want illegal or prescription can be bought open air market very easily.
 
I can bet you thats how most big US cities are though. Comparing canadian drug problems to US ones is a ridiculous thing to do. Not that i am proud of my country's drug problem, but America has much more methamphetamine, heroin, and cocaine than canada. Yeah, maybe more bud in canada, maybe but the "problem" drugs that cause the problems in society are easily acquired in america, i can guarantee you.
 
I bet Vancouver wouldn't have any problems with drugs at all if it weren't for the USA/Mexico. I don't even think Vancouver is the undisputed 'Drug Central' of Canada, is it?
 
Ditto to most comments here, Vancouver is very nice, safe, and clean compared to many other cities in N. America. Remember, Mexico is in N. America as well and I don't even want to know the murder and drug rates in Mexican cities and won't discuss them here.

This article was only published because of the world's focus on Vancouver for the Olympics; yes Vancouver has serious drug problems but they pale in comparison to US/Mexico border cities, NOLA, BMore, Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, etc.

Vancouver may be 'Harm Reduction Central' of North America, but I believe just about any big city here in Texas has more drug stuff going on in it, more hot spots, and more stuff moving through it, than Vancouver.

Juarez/El Paso would be high up there as possibly being 'Drug Central', heck just about any border city like Laredo would be up there, as would New Orleans. Talk about a city with a drug problem!

I'm confident there are areas of Chicago, Atlanta, BMore, Detroit, Houston, NO,LA, LA,CA, and most other big US cities just as bad if not much worse than Vancouver's lower east side. I know of plenty of 'drug meccas' in BMore, Chicago, Atlanta, Houson, NO,LA, and lots of other US cities... And Mexico, well, I don't even want to think about it.

di.ACE.tyl.rob -- where did you get those statistics?

I couldn't find many details on crime in Canada, although the Wikipedia article on US cities by crime rate confirm a murder rate of about 37 per 100,000 citizens in BMore's ~650,000 population, although New Orleans blows that away with a murder rate of nearly 64 per 100,000 citizens -- a higher rate than any country (unsurprisingly Central/South America and Africa have very high murder rates).

The Wikipedia article about crime in Canada shows relatively low murder rates. 1.9 murders per 100,000 citizens nationwide, 2.5 in BC -- about half that of Seattle -- well below Saskatoon's 4.1 and Nunavut's 6.5. Wikipedia lists of countries by prevalence of cocaine or opiate use show the US ahead of Canada, not that that's a good thing, although it shows Canada as having a higher prevalence of marijuana use. The article on crime in Canada notes that the gap between violent crime in the US and Canada has been narrowing for some time FWIW.

Los Angeles checks in at about 10 murders per 100,000, almost twice the US national average but nowhere near NO,LA, Camden, NJ, Gary, IN, Youngstown, OH, etc. Even Compton with it's reputation has a relatively modest murder rate at just under 30 per 100,000 citizens.

Just a fluff article IMO, I'd appreciate some statistics to back up the author's claims.
 
di.ACE.tyl.rob said:
276 Murders in Baltimore in 2006 - Straight from the FBI

Where are YOU getting facts from?

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2006/data/table_08_md.html
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Wikipedia, which uses the same FBI statistics, 3rd link, so we agree on that source for the US statistics.

However, the Crime in Canada Wikipedia article doesn't provide city by city information although they do break it down by province. I just searched Statistics Canada and found this table that gives city by city statistics for murders and other crimes -- Vancouver had 54 homicides in a city of 2.2 million in 2008 for a rate of 2.4 murders per 100,000 people. Edmonton, Winnipeg and Calgary (among others) had higher murder rates than Vancouver according to the Canadian gov't. That's primarily what I was asking for, we had the same source for the BMore and other US numbers.

I'd be interested in any good sources, e.g., a government website, for information regarding crime rates in other countries if anyone has that kind of info handy :)
 
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