Our drug addictions are behind most of the gunfire

Waterloo Region’s surge in gun violence is fuelled by a flourishing drug trade. We can only overcome it if we put a stop to drug addictions here

The Toronto-Waterloo corridor is a wonderful thing, when it refers to a cluster of technology companies and research-intensive universities that have transformed the economy here.

And it's a terrible thing, when it refers to Highway 401 bringing drug dealers, illegal guns and criminal gangs from Toronto.

This week, 20-year-old Kyle Parthe from Cambridge was shot and killed in a suburban plaza near Jamieson Parkway and Franklin Boulevard.

It was the third shooting death this year, and the 15th time guns have been fired here in 2019.
These gunshots can happen anywhere.

Dozens of bullets shattered glass and wounded people at a busy Subway sandwich shop in Waterloo's university neighbourhood on Good Friday. Two days later, more shots were fired in the same student neighbourhood.

Earlier that same week, a grandmother from Cambridge named Helen Schaller was shot and killed in the parking lot of the building where she lived.

At the beginning of the summer, three people were injured when a fight between four men escalated to gunplay outside a restaurant in south Kitchener at dinner time. A frantic bystander ran inside, dripping blood on the carpet. Customers stopped eating and called 911. Traumatized employees closed the restaurant.

Most of these gun attacks are targeted. Most are related to the drug trade.

A few years ago, people might have used knives instead of guns. But now we're seeing an "escalating'' rise in gun violence, says Waterloo Regional Police Chief Bryan Larkin.

He drew a direct link between drug addictions here and the illicit trafficking of drugs, which bring the turf wars, organized crime and "public disorder" that we are now seeing.

Meanwhile, violent crime rates in Waterloo Region increased in 2018 by 18 per cent over 2017.

They now surpass the Ontario average.

We are rapidly having to re-think our image of ourselves as a peaceful cluster of cities where nothing much happens.

It's easy to think of the guns and violence as something brought here by people in Toronto. Nothing to do with us.

The truth is that this conception is both right and wrong.

The drug trade and the gangs who distribute it are based in Toronto.

But they wouldn't have a presence here if we didn't want what they're selling.

If we didn't have so many people who are so desperate for illegal drugs, often laced with toxic fentanyl and carfentanil, the traffickers wouldn't be so bold.

One first responder told the story of answering a 911 call to find a local man whose lips and fingernails had turned blue during a drug overdose.

His girlfriend had called for help. She was afraid that he was dying. But he recovered after life-saving naloxone was administered to him.

And the first thing this man did, when he had enough energy to sit up and speak, was to yell at his girlfriend for interrupting the best part of his "high."

That was more important to him than whether he would live or die.

New figures show we aren't making progress.

In the first seven months of this year, there were 46 suspected opioid overdose deaths in Waterloo Region. By contrast, there were 53 in all of 2018.

The guns, the deaths, the targeted violence we see around us make it seem as if we're in the middle of a war.

But until we figure out how to stop the pain felt by people with addictions, pain that is numbed by these powerful and dangerous drugs, it's a war we are doomed to lose.

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