Laid-Back Nanaimo: B.C.'S Drug Capital? -- Influx Of Immigrants Brings Big-City Problems
NANAIMO, B.C. - People have flocked to this island city off Canada's west coast in recent years and lapped up all Nanaimo has to offer: beautiful ocean scenery, boating, fishing, hunting, good schools, little snow and a lifestyle far more peaceful than that in bustling Vancouver across the strait.
Recently, however, Nanaimo's offerings have expanded a bit too much. Heroin and cocaine trafficking have increased dramatically here, and law-enforcement officials and political leaders say the situation is getting worse. The perpetrators, they say, are principally Vietnamese immigrants who are peddling their wares to a younger clientele.
Tensions are high in this city of 70,000. Many Vietnamese are angry they are being blamed for a problem sown by only a few, and they fear reprisals from drug dealers if they name names. Some white residents are calling on the federal government in Ottawa to enact new restrictions on immigration, effectively blaming Canada's open-door policy for their drug troubles. A magazine recently dubbed Nanaimo "Canada's heroin capital."
Mayor Gary Korpan doubts his city is any worse than the major hubs of Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver. "You can never exactly estimate the extent of the problem," he said. "But we know more charges are being (filed), more people are overdosing, more crimes are being committed by people who are strung out. If we don't take strong action now, it will get away out of control."
Nanaimo, founded more than 140 years ago by British coal miners, is a port city that has always had its share of illegal drugs. It is on two ferry lines from the mainland, and, because it is an easy drive to the provincial capital of Victoria in the south or the lumber country up north, it serves well as a distribution center. Nanaimo is known, in fact, as Hub City.
For years, the Hell's Angels motorcycle gang reputedly ran the drug trade here. But in the past two years, police say, the drugs have become stronger and more plentiful, and the dealers now are Asian.
In contrast to the established Vietnamese community of several thousand, many of whom arrived from South Vietnam in the 1980s, the new arrivals tend to be from North Vietnam. Many of those engaged in drugs appear to have learned their trade in the refugee camps of Hong Kong, police say.
"A large majority of drug trafficking" is done by Vietnamese dealers, said Sgt. Phil Humphries, head of the drug squad for the Nanaimo section of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. "They are trafficking in large amounts of cocaine and heroin, and their visibility and blatant methods make them obvious to the public as a whole."
Many dealers or their operatives work out of cars, using pagers and cellular phones. Others enlist their families: In March, an undercover policeman arrested an 8-year-old Vietnamese girl for selling heroin in her home. The child apparently was not aware of what was in the packet she handed over; she said she was just imitating what she had seen her father do. She was taken from her parents and placed in a foster home.
Police say the dealers are targeting high schools. Last April, two boys, one 17 and the other 18, died of heroin overdoses, bringing the total number of residents of the Nanaimo region who have died of overdoses this year to 25. Drug-related suspensions have doubled at local high schools, and students report finding used needles on the playgrounds.
Drugs also apparently have led to homicide. In September, the murdered body of Quang Long Tran, a local resident thought by police to be involved in drugs, was found 15 miles outside Nanaimo. The case has not been solved.
"Crime here, like crime in the United States, is a growth industry," said Kate Lowe, who works at the local health service.
Lowe helped organize a petition and letter-writing drive asking Prime Minister Jean Chretien to require deportation of non-Canadian criminals and to screen potential immigrants more carefully, among other things. She was told the drive generated 10,000 letters to Ottawa. Local Member of Parliament Bob Ringma also pushed for more resources, and four new officers are being added to the Mounties' federal drug staff in Nanaimo next year, doubling its size. In addition, police have started regular patrols in area high schools.
Local officials doubt, however, that more cops alone will solve the problem. Last spring, police in Nanaimo and nearby Victoria staged a major bust, arresting 40 people, 15 of them Nanaimo residents. All were Vietnamese. According to Humphries, drug activity was virtually uninterrupted.
"It's just a game," he said. "You knock off one guy for drug trafficking and there's a dozen more waiting to take his spot. . . . We could use another 100 (officers) and not cover everything."
Local officials say they are frustrated that the local Vietnamese community has for the most part been of little help in supplying names of dealers or other information about them. The drug squad has no Vietnamese officers, and police are hampered from infiltrating or even keeping tabs on drug gangs.
To Trang Pham, a nursing student who is vice president of the Nanaimo Vietnamese Society, those who demand cooperation from her community must not understand the potential consequences.
"It is really a small, enclosed community, and we all know each other, so it's really hard to stand up and say those names," she said. "And the volunteer could get himself into trouble. If I said, `So and so did it,' tomorrow they could find my body in the forest."
For a while, Pham said, white Nanaimo residents stopped shopping at Vietnamese-owned stores or eating at Vietnamese restaurants, though things have improved lately. But white schoolchildren still taunt their Vietnamese classmates on the playground and refuse to play with them, she said.
"When I first came here 10 years ago, people were really friendly, warm, caring," Pham said. "Now, it seems like the Vietnamese community is a kind of communicable disease that they don't want to touch with a 10-foot pole."