Prescription drug addictions in First Nations eclipsing alcoholism and gas sniffing
Prescription drug abuse explodes in some remote First Nation communities
TORONTO - Prescription drug abuse is exploding in isolated First Nation communities in northwestern Ontario, with many reporting an astounding 55 to 60 per cent of their residents addicted.
Native leaders told the Global TV program 16:9 The Bigger Picture that OxyContin pills only started arriving in the last three to four years and now are flooding into their communities, with addiction eclipsing previous problems of alcoholism and gas sniffing.
"This is different-and it's worse,'' says Donnie Morris, Chief of the 1,200 member Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (K.I.) First Nation. ``It cripples families. It's crippling communities. And the leadership just doesn't know how to deal with it.''
Most of the affected reserves are accessible only by air, or by ice roads for a few weeks in the winter - meaning stunningly high prices for the drugs.
OxyContin pills are being sold for $400 a pop - more than four times the street price to the south. Dealers often cut pills into quarters, which are sold for $100 each - in communities where unemployment rates typically top 70 per cent and most people survive on welfare.
Melanie Beardy, 29, told 16:9 that she has been addicted for five years and it caused her to neglect her four young children.
"I sold a lot of my stuff, and all my income would go to (drugs),'' she said. ``I was depending on my family to feed my kids.''
Beardy was participating in a 30-day detox program set up by the K.I. First Nation, and funded out of the impoverished band's meagre resources.
Health care on reserves is a federal responsibility, but Morris said his people did not want to wait for government assistance to treat addicts.
"It's our community problem, and as a community I think we should deal with it,'' he said.
The Chief of the Kingfisher Lake First Nation some 500 kilometres northwest of Thunder Bay, Ont., James Mamakwa, said his people feel neglected by Ottawa.
"I'm not sure if they care, to tell you the truth.''
Mamakwa said smugglers are resorting to increasingly brazen tactics, showing off a baby blanket with OxyContin pills sewn into the lining.
He said the high rate of addiction, coupled with low incomes in his community have resulted in a wave of thefts. Last year, someone - presumably an addict - stole $40,000 from a local business.
A recovering addict and former dealer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told 16:9 that smugglers hide pills inside bodily orifices and that traffickers sometimes charter planes and land on isolated lakes to deliver the cargo.
"It's easy, right?'' he said. ``It's just pills just a small little thing that you carry on your body.''
He said he used to have a good job at a mine and was supporting a common-law wife and children, but was fired, kicked off his reserve and estranged from his family because of his addiction and dealing.
"Drug use got me,'' he said. ``I figured drugs were more important than working.''
Morris, the K.I. First Nation chief, said organized crime gangs based in Thunder Bay, Ont., and Winnipeg are now running the prescription drug trade.
"They're tapping into the welfare system, our unemployment - trying to take all the money out of our communities and make them dependent on them to supply drugs,'' he said.
The Ontario Provincial Police superintendent for northwest Ontario, Ron van Straalen, said investigators have made a few arrests and in some cases choked off the supply to a trickle.
Van Straalen said police efforts are manifested in a skyrocketing price for OxyContin in some reserves - up to a stunning $1,600 per pill.
"It's a terrible way to measure success, but it is something,'' he said.
16:9 The Bigger Picture airs nationally on Global TV at 7 p.m. Saturday, with the exception of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, where it will be broadcast at 6:30 local time.