DRUG `SCOURGE' TAKES ITS TOLL

Communities must take on bigger role in fight against drugs:
RCMP

RCMP are trying to tackle what they call a "disturbing trend"
surrounding elaborate marijuana grow operations in Manitoba, after
last year seizing enough pot plants to almost cover a football field.

And after Mounties made 1,070 seizures of various kinds of illegal
drugs last year in more than 200 Manitoba communities, including what
assistant commissioner Bill Robinson describes as "fairly scary
prescription drugs" as well as ecstasy and cocaine, the national
police force says it's "probably just the tip of the iceberg."

At a news conference on Friday, Robinson said Manitoba families must
play a role in making their communities safer from the drug trade that
is mostly based in sophisticated and organized crime.

He said "parents need to understand" that even home prescription
medications such as Tylenol 3 and Oxycontin are increasingly targets
of theft, and are ending up in the hands of teens and children.

"We need, as a public and as parents, to understand that. We have to
reopen this conversation."

Winnipeg resident Lori Davis, whose drug-involved son Chad Davis was
killed at age 22 in an alleged homicide in 2008, tearfully said that
well-off suburban youths in loving families - not only those who live
in troubled homes in inner-city areas - are commonly drawn into the
deadly trade.

"Selling cocaine, for Chad, was an easy way to make big money," Davis
said of her son, after bringing an urn containing his cremated remains
to the press conference.

"Drugs have taken away our beloved youngest son, and have left us with
a heartache that will never go away."

Federal Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said the "scourge of drugs"
takes a "huge toll ... on our families."

The size and sophistication of grow operations and illegal drug
laboratories uncovered by police in Manitoba in recent years, Robinson
said, point to an "emerging and disturbing trend" requiring ever-
changing and improving cop tactics. He added that much of the trade
has grown in Manitoba due to an abundance of isolated properties, and
"the end product of a lot of enforcement" by police in other provinces
prompting trafficking operations to move.