'It’s disconcerting': Police work to stay ahead of new drugs, dangerous chemicals

Police train to deal with secret drug labs The overdose epidemic is claiming hundreds of lives in B.C. every year, and the crisis is forcing police to adapt to new risks.

A continuously-evolving drug landscape, with amateur chemists mixing dangerous chemicals into powerful new drugs in settings as disparate as shipping containers and highrise condos, has local police ramping up training and resources to keep up.

Dozens of local Mounties and municipal police are suiting up at a replica drug lab in Langley this week for annual training with the BC RCMP’s Clandestine Laboratory Enforcement and Response Team (C.L.E.A.R.), where they’re learning about the new techniques and combinations crooks are using to cook new drugs.

"Different recipes are always emerging, different psychoactive substances, more marketable drugs," said C.L.E.A.R. Chemical Diversion Unit leader Cpl. John Hartnett. "The subject matter is always changing, always evolving and as a team we have to go along with it."

Hartnett says amateur chemists will gather legal and legitimate chemicals like acetone or methanol from home improvement retailers or other unsuspecting businesses and combine it with more exotic chemicals ordered online, like elemental iodine.

It happens in settings that are often chaotic and can lead to unpredictable results for the drug cookers; for responding officers, it means they never know what they’ll be up against when they open the door of a suspected lab.

"I've encountered acid vapour clouds unexpectedly when a container is opened and a chemical reaction begins – it’s quite disconcerting," said Hartnett. "Our risk can be very high so we conduct a continuous risk assessment in these scenes in order to be as safe as possible and to mitigate these unknown hazards"

With British Columbia home to 75 per cent of all clandestine drug labs in the country, cash from the federal RCMP budget is the primary driver of the training, resources and expertise dealing with the problem.

"We are the state of the art, as far as clan lab teams go nationally" said Sgt. Derek Westwick, who oversees the C.L.E.A.R. program out of E-Division.

He says the rise of synthetic drug production in general, and the 2014 emergence of fentanyl on the local drug market, means the increasing resources and training are a necessity.

"It is now a component of our training, both here in the division and nationally at the training at the police college as part of the clandestine laboratory investigators' course," said Westwick, whose full-time team responds to the most dangerous labs across B.C.

Mounties say it’s hard to pinpoint precisely why B.C. is such a hub for illicit drug production.

But a combination of local chemical production, the number of companies selling legitimate glassware that can be used for drug creation plus the easy access to ports and the U.S. border for export to the south and overseas form a nexus drug producers can only dream of.

"Which makes British Columbia that perfect storm to have that amount of labs," said Westwick, who urges anyone suspicious of the presence of a large amount of chemicals or smelling something unusual in their area to report it to their local police.

While the illicit labs can be busted in industrial settings or shipping containers, police say they're just as likely to be in brand new Lower Mainland condominiums, tucked into attics, or openly set up in houses, with evidence children are coming into close contact with drugs and their precursor chemicals.

"It can be incredibly sad any time children are involved," said Hartnett.