OT
Canada is the greatest country in the world... USA has drug dealers, hookers, and ignorance abound.
"More brothels in Richmond, police suspect
By Mike Howell
The Vancouver Sun, August 8, 2000
The recent raid on a Richmond brothel of Malaysian prostitutes has led
police to believe the suburban city's downtown is infested with such
operations.
In approximately the last two years, Richmond RCMP have busted four
downtown brothels -- all with Malaysian prostitutes in Canada on visitors'
visas -- and say there are as many as six more in the same area."(cont)
friends-partners.org
Vancouver's Boom Has a Dark Side
By Howard Schneider
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, April 24, 1997; Page A27
In many ways, Canada's trading boom with the United States and the rest of the world has been a boon to this coastal city, as business expanded and immigrants from within and outside the country flocked to its comparatively temperate climate.
But when social service workers like John Turvey walk the streets of the city's lower east side, they see another aspect of what the increasing flow of goods and people has meant. Along the sidewalks of Hastings Street, drug dealers cluster in groups in front of their favorite hangouts, trading cash for the small plastic packets they slip into the hands of customers.
Those on the fringes of the trade – the junkies, the runners, and others – mill around the alleys and storefronts of pawnshops that have become prominent in the neighborhood's economy. Before recent neighborhood patrol efforts, addicts openly fixed on the street.
It is a scene not lost on law enforcement officials in both countries, who see in it the same thing as Turvey: evidence of Vancouver's emergence as a center of North American drug trafficking. With a major port, a relatively unpatrolled border with the United States, and now established criminal gangs of every stripe, the city often portrayed as Canada's Pacific paradise has also become the country's drug and crime capital.
"The availability is phenomenal," said Turvey, executive director of the Downtown Eastside Youth Activities Society, which offers addiction services, counseling and a needle exchange in one of Canada's poorest neighborhoods. "We are in real trouble."
U.S. officials familiar with the situation say Vancouver has become a favored point for Asian-based gangs to import heroin destined for distribution throughout Canada and the United States. Heavy immigration from Hong Kong and elsewhere has brought with it members of criminal organizations who have established a presence here, and, law enforcement officials say, started coordinating their work with groups in eastern Canada and the eastern United States.
"With the good comes the bad," said a U.S. official familiar with the drug trade evolving between Canada and the United States. "They are bringing their organizations with them."
That the market for illegal drugs would evolve in parallel with overall trade in the two countries was made apparent, unintentionally, in the recent meeting between President Clinton and Prime Minister Jean Chretien. Asked at a news conference about drug traffic between the two countries, Chretien misunderstood and thought the question was about truck traffic, and answered that an increase was likely and welcome under trade agreements.
Chretien quickly corrected himself, but law enforcement and diplomatic officials acknowledge the difficulty of easing the movement of trucks, planes and trains between the two countries without also easing the path for smugglers.
Drug trafficking between Canada and the United States has not historically been an important issue for U.S. authorities, who have concentrated on narcotics coming from the south, or through U.S. seaports. But now, they say it is no longer possible to ignore America's northern border.
In one example of how the market is developing, an otherwise legitimate shipment of 600 boxes of noodles from China arrived in Seattle in 1994 with 10 extra crates attached, all of them destined for a warehouse in Vancouver. The 10 extra boxes contained 156 pounds of heroin, and were supposed to be retrieved in Vancouver by suspected associates of a drug gang. It was only through a lucky tip that authorities did not simply wave the shipment on to its final destination, but instead seized it in what became one of Canada's largest drug busts.
In another, officials with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said a New York dealer began basing his operations in Toronto because, they suspect, he knew that an arrest in Canada would likely draw a lighter sentence than in the United States. Canada does not have the same stiff mandatory minimum sentences or sentencing guidelines as the United States.
It is uncertain how heavily such concerns factor into the calculations of drug traffickers, but law enforcement officials say it is one more reason Canada is an attractive spot to import drugs headed for America.
Authorities in Vancouver say they are concerned the problem will get worse, particularly after a recent federal government decision to disband the local harbor patrol to save money. Policing of the port is being turned over to the city, but local officials say they have no funds to keep the 30-person force.
"Organized crime operates very successfully in or through the port," said Constable Anne Drennan, spokeswoman for the Vancouver police. "We will do our job as best we can but it is not a rosy picture."
The volume of narcotics moving through Vancouver is evident in downtown neighborhoods like the one served by Turvey's group.
The city has experienced an epidemic of overdose deaths in recent years as the quantity of drugs on the market increased, the price dropped, and the level of purity rose. In addition, the city began seeing a surge in the use of injected cocaine – a peculiarity in the local market that officials attribute to a rash of dealers swapping British Columbia's high-quality domestic marijuana for cocaine, which was then marketed among city addicts with a preference for needles.
On Hastings Avenue, a network of pawnshops and all-night stores developed around the drug trade, and property crime soared. Between 1990 and 1996, thefts from autos increased from 20,000 to more than 38,000.
The situation led the city of 450,000 to what British Columbia coroner Larry Campbell said is likely one of the highest overdose death rates in North America. "It's staggering," he said. "There is a tremendous amount of heroin out there. It is coming from all over the place – all over the world."
Law enforcement officials feel there is a justified perception that Vancouver is the easiest city in the country in which to be an addict. Benefits and services, they say, are better than in provinces that have been cutting social programs, and the judges, apparently, are more lenient.
Small-scale dealing rarely draws more than a 30-day sentence, according to Drennan and others in the Vancouver police, and possession crimes typically end with no sentence, if they are prosecuted at all.
Town, law enforcement and social services officials are in agreement that the social aspects of drug addiction are more important to solving the problem in the long run than the brute force of law enforcement, but the area's reputation is not helping matters in the meantime.
"The message to people throughout Canada is that it is easier to get away with a drug offense" in British Columbia, Drennan said, "so if you are going to be involved in the trade or do drugs, it is better to do it here."
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