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The Canadian Press
CAT LAKE, ONT.—Item 9 in the letter to members of the Cat Lake reserve from the children in Grade 6 is as blunt as it is painful.
“It hurts us and shoomis and kokum (grandpa and grandma) when you’re doing drugs and you’re not at home.” Cat Lake is the epicentre of prescription drug addiction in Canada. Community leaders believe between 70 and 80 per cent of the adults are hooked on oxycodone-based pain killers like OxyContin or Percocets.
Governments and local health authorities are slowly gearing up to deal with the runaway addiction that has slammed communities across the country, but especially First Nations. But the help can’t come quickly enough for the children of Cat Lake.
“We feel that we don’t know what to do to help you stop doing Drug,” the children wrote as “Point Number Five.” “We want you to stop because it hurts our family and we don’t like it when we’re angry,” according to their fourth item.
The children in this corner of northwestern Ontario, 400 kilometres north of Thunder Bay, put together the list over a few days in a workshop with the help of a local band member.
They are desperately yearning for ways to end to the crisis in their community, which has triggered waves of theft and has left children hungry and bereft of the stability and support they crave.
Out of a population of about 700, local officials say they collect 500 needles a week through the needle-exchange program. They have put 172 adults on their list of confirmed addicts; another 250 are suspected. Almost everyone else is either a child or an elder.
Oxy, the highly addictive and extremely expensive little pill, has become a way of life in many reserves. The drug is supposed to be taken for intense pain, by prescription only. It produces an instant high when crushed, snorted or injected.
In Cat Lake and other parts of northwestern Ontario, health care workers just assume most of their adult patients are using. And yet the narcotic pain killer is no longer being produced. Purdue Pharmaceuticals has pulled it from the shelves, replacing it with OxyNEO, which it says is difficult to abuse.
First Nations leaders to warn of a pending crisis of withdrawal. Oxy addicts can build up a tolerance and require larger, more frequent doses to get high. But kicking the addiction, for many, is too punishing many to bear.
Abnormal sleeping patterns, violent shakes, diarrhea, headache and anxiety are common for days on end. Relapses are frequent.
The dealers’ stockpiles of the opioid are now dwindling and the price is climbing steeply. Const. Kyle Brend of the Nishnawbe-Aski Police force in Cat Lake said the spike in price for the drug has forced users to reconsider their habits — but not always for the better.
A full-strength pill can sell for about $1,000 and a quarter-dose for about $250. When a supply formerly came into the community, users would scour their houses for possessions to sell, hit on their relatives for cash, raid their savings or gamble, Brend said. There’s a bit less of the door-to-door scavenging for drug money of late.
“You sell a digital camera for $60. You sell a couple things like that, you have money. It’s getting harder nowadays with the prices.”
Instead, addicts are looking for other ways to get high.
Rumours and Internet chatter about how to abuse OxyNEO abound. Health workers suspect increased usage of cocaine and morphine, in particular. Brend sees evidence of more booze, even though Cat Lake, like many reserves in the area, is supposed to be dry.
“Now it seems there’s a lot of drinking to offset what they’re not getting in the pills.”
The police are cracking down as best they can on contraband. But even though Cat Lake has only one entry point — the airport — now that the winter road has melted, the community has only ever ejected one person for dealing, Brend recalls.
The pills are easy to hide — in pockets, packages, even inside diapers or the lining of clothing. The entire community knows who is dealing, but authorities never catch them in the act because they are protected by tight-knit family and friends.
In North Caribou Lake, another northwestern Ontario community struggling with addictions, a twenty-something dealer stands out in the street in broad daylight, surrounded by a small group of band members. He melts away when anyone in authority casts a wary eye.
So instead of focusing on crime and punishment, community leaders focus on healing the addicted and convincing any remaining non-users to stay clean.
“STOP NOW!” reads item number 8 on the children’s list. “We want you to get help and get better.”
For the rest of this article, please go to the Toronto Star website: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1162160–first-nations-children-send-distressing-letter-to-addicted-parents