It’s a drug that is slowly corrupting our city from the inside out. Methamphetamine, or crystal meth, is being blamed as the driving force behind Saskatoon’s high crime rates.
It’s a concern for law enforcement that has no end in sight as long as the allure of the drug remains.
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For 10 years, Toni Vandale was addicted to the drug and knows just how powerful a grip it can have on a person.
She started using crystal meth at the age of 17 to help numb trauma she had experienced and was hooked after using it just once.
“There’s nothing that feels quite like that, it’s kind of like you’re possessed once you’re high,” Vandale said.
“You can’t really control the things you’re doing, you don’t really realize the things you’re doing like the digging through scrapes.”
She said when she was using she could stay up for seven days straight without sleeping.
“You could use once and it could last three days.”
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It was also her drug of choice because it was cheap. Vandale told Global News she used to pay anywhere from $10 to $20 for a point – a tenth of a gram.
The trade-off she said – it stole her soul.
“It took everything I loved and cared about and it took it.”
She even had a run-in with the law for bank fraud. What eventually scared her straight, Vandale said, was when she discovered she was pregnant and that was it – she got clean.
Not everyone is that lucky or knows where to find help and it’s being reflected in crime stats.
READ MORE: Saskatoon has second-highest crime rate in Canada
Saskatoon is second only to Regina in terms of having the highest overall crime rates in the country and crystal meth is being blamed.
“We were seeing some good declines until about two years ago when methamphetamine hit,” Saskatoon police Chief Clive Weighill said.
“That’s driving a lot of our armed robberies, theft of vehicles, theft from vehicles, household break and enters and break and enters into businesses.”
According to Weighill, the statistics came as no surprise especially when it came to crime rates in Western Canada.
“We’re all facing a lot of the same issues of poverty, poor housing, racism, disadvantages that are really big social contributors to what we’re seeing happening in crime.”
There are also no easy solutions to the problem.
“We have to put money into housing, we have to put money into jobs, we have to put money into education and we have to make sure we level the playing field for everybody in the province,” Weighill said.
Weighill said approximately 25 per cent of patients being admitted for substance abuse in the city are addicted to crystal meth.
“That’s a big problem for our health region, that’s a big problem for social services and it’s a big problem for the police,” he added.
“We’ll have to work together with all those agencies and try to come up with some solutions, some education and some enforcement.”
Vandale agreed there needs to be more supports in the community open to helping people addicted to the drug – she hopes to be one of them.
She just completed her first year of schooling to become an addictions counsellor in order to give back to the community.