Saskatchewan struggles with crystal meth crisis
Former addict Cybil Cappo says nobody has the answers to the province’s growing meth problem. Addiction driving up all categories of crime in Regina, police say
REGINA— It was 2015 when Cybil Cappo spent her first night of what would turn into months of getting high on crystal meth.
“My one friend, we lived in his basement and it was November ... Next thing you know it was February and I was still in that basement, like just doing meth.”
Now off meth and living in Edmonton, the 29-year-old mother said nobody seems to have the answers needed to begin to solve Saskatchewan’s growing meth problem.
Regina’s chief of police, Evan Bray, says meth addiction is driving up all categories of crime in the city. In about 2015 — the same year Cappo started getting high on meth — the drug emerged as a widespread problem in the city, Bray says.
Crystal meth is relatively cheap and availability of ingredients means it’s everywhere.
“It really escalates quickly into a real community safety issue,” Bray says. “It causes people to stay awake for long hours at a time, engage in high-risk behaviour, hyper-vigilance, excessive paranoia.”
RCMP Staff Sgt. Craig Toffoli says crystal meth is mostly brought into the province from Alberta and British Columbia.
In 2015, there were 142 methrelated incidents recorded in Saskatchewan. The figure jumped last year to more than 530 offences.
Meth and crack addicts have requested pipes to more safely inhale the drug instead of injecting it at harm reduction sites, says Dr. Saqib Shahab, Saskatchewan’s chief medical health officer.
The province struggles with high rates of HIV and hepatitis Cthrough intravenous drug use and wants to prevent needle sharing, he says. In two months, staff have handed out more than 1,000 pipes.
Tracy Zambory, president of the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses, calls meth addicts “frequent flyers” in hospital emergency rooms.
They need long-term help that isn’t available for them, she says.
“Someone who’s high on crystal meth is disruptive. They are unpredictable. They are dangerous. They are extremely sick.”
Cappo got off meth when she was in jail. She has been clean for about three years. She’s now studying to work with people with addictions, but plans to stay away from Regina because the people from her past are still using.
“I made a lot of enemies and I’ve hurt a lot of people,” she says.
“But change is possible. And I’m proof of it.”