Brillo Pad Pipe Full Screen Mode
Brillo Pad Pipe Series Came Out
Brillo Pad Pipe Trial And Dozens

Many are second- or third-generation users -- born to parents who inherited their addictions from grandparents whose drug of choice was most likely alcohol.

Brillo Pad Pipe Full Screen Mode

Author of the article: Chris Cobb Publishing date: Jun 18, 2010 June 19, 2010 11 minute read Toggle full screen mode Previous Gallery Image It is estimated that 5,000 people in Ottawa are addicted to crack cocaine.

Photo by Image courtesy Ian Smith Rob Boyd runs the Oasis Needle exchange out of the Sandy Hill Community Health Centre.

Its free, open to the public and offers unique insights into the Ottawa community.

Brillo Pad Pipe Series Came Out

This series came out of three months I spent covering the Ottawa courthouse.

Brillo Pad Pipe Trial And Dozens

At the time, a manslaughter trial and dozens of other cases were directly or indirectly linked to crack.

Crack cocaine is not a problem confined to any marginalized group or a single area of the city.

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Its a health problem, its a crime problem, and -- directly or indirectly -- we are all its victims Hannah Cowen has seen too many lives ravaged by crack cocaine to dare claim shes seen it all.

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Article content My jaw drops at least once a week, says Cowen, staff nurse at the Oasis clinic and harm reduction centre at the Sandy Hill Community Centre.

Theres always something new out of that place in hell where crack, the irresistible seducer, leads its victims.

There was the woman in her mid-40s whose efforts to shed pounds took her from the suburbs of Ottawa to the downtown streets.

Yes, she lost weight, but also her husband, her children, her health and her home and her self-respect.

Others have sent inheritances up in smoke, lottery winnings through holes in their veins.

Some addicts are fed drugs deliberately, Cowen says, by people who want to hook them into the sex trade.

During the 14 years that Oasis has been open, Cowen has watched Ottawas drug of choice shift from injected cocaine -- the pure stuff -- to its cheaper, more sinister, diluted cousin: Crack.

The first signs that crack had creeped into Ottawa were increasing cases of hep C and HIV, lip sores, asthma, pneumonia and other respiratory problems.

Article content We thought it was crystal meth, but police werent finding crystal meth, says Cowen.

We finally realized we were dealing with a crack problem.

Crack is Ottawas dirty little secret -- or at the very least Ottawas grand delusion.

While the epicentre of the problem is the ByWard Market and the Rideau Centre, thats just its most obvious manifestation.

There are addicts in Orlans and Kanata and Barrhaven and many other middle-class enclaves.

When they dont have it, they feel threatened in a very basic way, even though the side-effects are devastating: Losing houses, relationships, prostitution and jail.

Although no one is immune to the reach of crack -- there are people Ive seen who are associated with families you would know, Cowen says -- the bulk of Oasis clients are addicts from the street, or else theyre couch surfers in a battle with mental illness and addiction.

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