LAKELAND – It is undeniable that the use of methamphetamine is having a significant impact on communities across the country – northeastern Alberta is no exception.
“Methamphetamine is pervasive in our communities and has contributed to property crimes and crimes of violence,” stated Christina Zoernig, a federal policing strategist for Alberta RCMP.
The growing use and prevalence of the chemical street drug is one of the reasons why the Alberta RCMP launched a methamphetamine awareness campaign last year on Aug. 31, International Overdose Awareness Day. The campaign was run in collaboration with the Canadian Integrated Response to Organized Crime (CIROC).
Statistics released by the Alberta government show that the province lost over 800 lives to meth-related accidental overdoses in 2021 – a 28 per cent increase from fatalities in 2020.
There were also 10,401 emergency department visits related to substance use recorded in 2021. How many of those visits were related to the use of methamphetamine is unclear.
Criminal Intelligence Service Canada identified meth as having one of the highest threat levels “due to its geographical reach, high burden of harm, and increased involvement of organized crime groups.”
In the Lakeland, meth and other drug-related incidents are becoming all too common.
Bonnyville RCMP Staff Sgt. Sarah Parke told Lakeland This Week that the correlation between crimes being committed in relation to drug use and trafficking is common knowledge. However, to compile a report outlining every crime’s relation to substances such as meth would pose a challenge.
“We would have to almost go into each individual occurrence to check whether or not drugs were involved, a factor, or if the person was high at the time,” she said.
While not every crime can be traced to drug use or procurement, Parke acknowledged that in the last decade there has been a positive correlation between property crimes and illicit drugs. In many cases, somebody is committing an offence while high or somebody is committing an offence to support their drug addiction.
“Property crime is often the periphery offence routed back to the drug addiction,” she said.
According to Alberta RCMP statistics on methamphetamine-related offences, 2021 saw 1,190 meth possession charges laid, 632 arrests for trafficking and possession for the purpose of trafficking meth, as well as five charges laid in relation to the production of meth in the province.
Parke noted that one of the greatest challenges law enforcement faces is that “Crimes being committed are intertwined with addictions, social issues and mental health issues. It's a big web of different things going on, so it just makes it all the more complicated.”
Getting to the root cause of these issues from a law enforcement perspective is a challenge, she said. “That's the question, right? We have a certain mandate, and it's tough when there are so many other factors involved in the crimes that we are investigating.”
Treating meth addiction in the Lakeland
For Lakeland residents trying to kick an addiction, whether it be alcohol, cannabis, cocaine or meth, they may have spent 28-days or more at the Bonnyville Indian-Métis Rehabilitation Centre.
Nicole Evans, an interim executive director for the rehab centre, told Lakeland This Week that over 360 clients sought treatment at the facility in 2021.
“I would say a good 90 per cent of those are methamphetamine addictions. Alcohol and methamphetamines are always the two most common addictions we see, which was a huge change from a decade ago,” said Evans.
“In the past, we saw lots of marijuana, lots of cocaine and alcohol [addictions], but now it's definitely shifting to more fentanyl, more opioids and more for methamphetamines.”
A 2017 Canadian Tobacco, Alcohol, and Drugs Survey reported that 3.7 per cent of Canadians have used methamphetamine at least once in their lifetime. It is likely that this number has risen over the last six years.
And while meth use among the general population in Canada may be low, the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction notes that “there has been a dramatic increase in the availability and harms associated with methamphetamine in Canada.”
Despite the growing prevalence of crystal meth-use, those who use the illicit drug remain highly stigmatized in society.
“Unfortunately, opioids and methamphetamines are one of the cheapest street drugs at the moment,” noted Evans. “It's the most easily accessible to individuals.”
One of the factors that makes meth so cheap and so challenging for law enforcement to stop is the accessibility of ingredients to make the drug.
“The ingredients for it are everywhere,” she said, adding that meth is commonly referred to as ‘the under the kitchen sink drug’ due to the common house hold chemicals used to make it.
“Meth is starting in our communities, which is scary and that leads to such an overwhelming amount of it in the community. It goes back to the whole accessibility of it – it's not only export-import that's causing the issues. It's being made here,” said Evans.
Addictions often start in the teenage years
What may surprise some is how early in life addictions to alcohol and other drugs can form.
“We’ve seen [addiction] start as early as just 14 years old and that's because eventually it becomes really tiring to carry around pain that may have occurred in early childhood,” said Evans.
“It can be something like emotional isolation, it can be abuse, neglect, or it could just be unhealthy parent-child boundaries. A lot of the times that puts stress on kids... It really does open people up to vulnerability later in life if they haven’t learned healthy skills.”
The type of addiction an individual faces often relates to the type of substances that are most accessible to them.
“The most accessible substance a lot of times for young teens is alcohol,” she said. “Lots of times people started drinking and when that becomes unregulated, they're making the jump right from drinking to cocaine or to methamphetamines.”
When someone begins abusing drugs and alcohol it begins to biologically change the structure of a person’s prefrontal cortex, especially in a developing brain, which impacts an individual’s personality and decision-making abilities, explained Evans.
"That's often where a lot of those crime rates are coming from and why those with addiction issues are exhausting the judicial system right now with all of these ‘Under the Influence’ charges, charges of possession, charges of trafficking. All of those things harm families and individuals at the end of the day,” she acknowledged.
Evans explained that the body is constantly working to reach a baseline. “That's a survival instinct. So, when your body is constantly trying to reach baseline with a foreign substance inside of it, it causes a lot of maladaptations and that's where we sometimes see acts of domestic violence come out and acts of neglect.”
Additionally, people who have endured trauma may already have some maladaptions to that system, she noted.
But there is always hope, Evans said. “That's why recovery works also, because the minute you take that substance out of the body and we start establishing routine, we start establishing those really basic coping skills, and start establishing social-emotional knowledge, the body starts going ‘Oh, that’s what I am supposed to be doing’.”
Part two of ‘Methamphetamine, crime and treatment in the Lakeland’ will be released the following week.
