Posted Nov 5, 2019, 3:01 AM
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I am a typical
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Join Date: Apr 2004
Location: Thunder Bay
Posts: 41,172
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Speaking as someone who is actually involved with a centre that provides programming to at-risk inner-city youth as part of a gang prevention strategy (not that any of this experience really matters), while the use of non-cannabis drugs has always been present (my uncle was involved in the opioid trade back in the early 2000s, before most people knew what opioids were or how dangerous they would become), and while the incursion of gangs into the community has increased over a longer period than just the past year, there has been a clear trend of drug dealers trying to get people hooked onto different kinds of drugs, or cutting drugs they've been selling with fentanyl or other opioids to make them more addictive. (The goal is to increase it enough to get them to come back, not to kill them; but we all know how it is working out.)
In terms of who is actually involved in those gangs, just five years ago gangs from Southern Ontario were barely known here. Today, numerous gangs (it's hard to know exactly how many because they're so transient and poorly organized) are present and engage in tactics that weren't widespread in the past (use of guns, day time murders in public areas, and home takeovers).
The nature of gangs has changed significantly here in just 3 years or so, no one here would deny it. And since legalization, a lot of them aren't involved with cannabis at all. Most of the time when they get raided, they're found to be dealing cocaine, crack cocaine, and fentanyl or other opioids. Drug busts involving cannabis have become rare, even though it's still illegal to sell it on the black market. The gangs have definitely shifted what they're moving.
Most black market cannabis is being sold by people who are only selling it to trusted individuals and typically aren't gang members or committing acts of violence. They're likely buying it from gangs at some point but the nature of the black market cannabis trade is very different than that of other drugs.
Also interesting, is that Thunder Bay's drugs are mostly coming from Southern Ontario. The crystal meth crisis that's hitting Winnipeg isn't happening here; it's cocaine, crack and opioids here. Crystal meth exists, but not in the epidemic levels they're seeing out west. That stuff seems to stop around Dryden. It hints at reduced activity in the city from Winnipeg gangs, likely due to the violent nature of the Toronto and Ottawa gangs. There's a lot of violence in Winnipeg, but Thunder Bay, like Toronto, is seeing shootings during day light in middle-class neighbourhoods. Several of them have resulted in murders. And almost everyone involved is from the GTA or Ottawa; when locals are involved, they're affiliated with the gangs from the GTA and Ottawa. (After all, it's kind of conspicuous to have a black man with a GTA accent flying to a northern Reserve; they pay native people to move stuff up there.)
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