Canadian connection concerns legal, medical officials

CALAIS — Although some of the prescription drugs being abused in Washington County and on area American Indian reservations come from local sources, law enforcement officers and tribal officials also see supply lines extending into Canada.

St. Stephen, New Brunswick, located across the border from Calais, is about 35 minutes from the Pleasant Point reservation.

“I know of three people from here who have been caught at the border trying to bring drugs across,” said Pleasant Point police Chief Joseph Barnes.

Known as the gateway to Canada, Calais is also a gateway for Dilaudid bound for the U.S., according to Canadian officials.

Calais has two ports of entry manned by U.S. Customs agents. The federal Controlled Substances Act allows a U.S. resident to bring in up to 50 dosage units of a controlled medication without a valid prescription.

The medications must be declared upon arrival, be for an individual’s personal use and be in their original container. If an individual has a valid prescription, that person can bring in the amount prescribed on the prescription, customs officials said.

Although it is legal to bring a small amount of controlled medication into the country, U.S. Customs public affairs officer Layne Lathram said it does not mean an individual can do that on a regular basis.

“They [U.S. Customs officers] look for things out of the norm. They look for patterns. If they see the same person coming with 50 dosage units every day they will look into that,” she said.

The Pleasant Point police chief agreed. “They’ve seen enough of these people going back and forth that they are starting to check more and more. In the past month they’ve caught five,” Barnes said.

Darrell Crandall of the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency said he also is aware that drugs are being smuggled in from Canada. “MDEA agents are being regularly summoned to the ports of entry to deal with people smuggling prescription narcotics into Washington County,” he said.

But the MDEA supervisor is hesitant to focus on a single source. “What we have is a multifaceted problem. … We have prescription narcotics that were originally dispensed under a lawful prescription being diverted. We have prescriptions being dispensed through forged and altered prescriptions. I feel that in some cases physicians are being duped by patients with alternative motives, and then we have the situation of just outright theft,” he said.

Washington County Assistant District Attorney Paul Cavanaugh speculated that drug dealers turned to Canada after local sources dried up. “Some of the drug enforcement activity is statewide. You pick up a newspaper and on any day you hear of another bust in Bangor or Lewiston or Portland. I think that’s put pressure on and had an impact on the drug trafficking. So they [the drug dealers] turned to another source of supply … Canada,” Cavanaugh said.

Dr. Donald Calebaugh of the Pleasant Point Health Center also speculated that most of the drugs were coming either from out of state or from across the border. He said tribal members who had asked to be sent to a detox treatment center were addicted to Dilaudid.

“We don’t prescribe Dilaudid and I don’t know anyone who does. We don’t prescribe morphine and we don’t prescribe a number of things these people are shooting up,” Calebaugh said.

Law enforcement officials in Canada are working with Maine officials. St. Stephen police Chief John MacCreedy said prescription drug abuse — specifically Dilaudid abuse — is a serious problem in his community. He said Dilaudid often is obtained through a process called double-doctoring. An individual goes to one doctor and gets a prescription for Dilaudid and then gets a similar prescription from another doctor. Double-doctoring is also a problem in Maine.

Armed with extra pills, the individual sells the illegal contraband to people in Maine. One hundred Dilaudids have a street value of around $5,000 (U.S.) in Calais. In Canada the same bottle would bring $2,000 (Canadian).

“This is all about economics,” said Sgt. Ed MacEachern, NCO in charge of the drug enforcement section for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. “If it wasn’t for the profit margins here, there’d be no traffickers. … Take that $20 Canadian and compare it to $40 or $50 U.S. They are almost tripling their money [in Washington County],” he said.

MacEachern said the RCMP has learned through its intelligence gathering that some drugs are coming from other places in Canada, with some such efforts involving organized crime. “Organized crime figures see the profit possibility, and they certainly see the profit possibility of this drug. They sell marijuana, they sell cocaine and they certainly move Dilaudid around,” he said.

But MacEachern quickly added that he does not wish to raise the specter that a crime family is operating in St. Stephen. “What I am saying is that organized crime does have an impact on the Dilaudid situation in St. Stephen either as purchasers or in some fashion. They are not set up necessarily in St. Stephen.”