Nanaimo Daily News from Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada • 12

12A Nanaimo Daily Free Press, Saturday, November 18, 1995 THE WORLD i pi swes -g jw I 1 1 sgaini By Fred Weir The Canadian Press MOSCOW The explosion of crime in1 post-Soviet Russia is a minefield for foreigners, but prudence and common sense can help visitors avoid becoming victims. Col. Mikhail Protkin, deputy chief of the Interior Ministry's criminal investigation department, acknowledged "the level of social danger has increased sharply oyer the past few years." "New crimes nave appeared that we didn't even have names for such as hostage-taking, counterfeiting, extortion and contract murder. It is a very scary situation. "Unfortunately, foreign visitors to this country often find themselves in the criminal's sights." High profile attacks such as a gunman's seizure of a busload of South Korean sightseers on Red Square last month have slashed tourism to a fraction of its Soviet-era levels.

But foreign business people are still coming in search of opportunities. Crime has more than doubled since the; collapse of the Soviet Union five years ago. Offences against the roughly 80,000 foreign residents, surged 32 per cent last year alone. About half-of the; foreign community are Westerners' mostly diplomats, business people and journalists who call Moscow f- TEEN DRUG USE UP Drugs, particularly cannabis, are making a comeback in high school, noticeable last year but has since grown significantly. a' trend which first became cp photo nap ddd Support for divorce slipping in Ireland explanations ranging from dope being easier to acquire to at-titudinal changes.

"We know what the variables may be. We don't. know if those be attributed to what we're seeing now," says Sherry Palmer, supervisor of youth services for the Addictions Foundation of Manitoba. Outside a downtown Toronto high school on Wednesday, a 17-year-old who appropriately calls himself "Stones" says he's a regular pot smoker. He's dressed in a khaki army jacket, his long wavy hair pulled back in a ponytail and a gold hoop earring.

"It's no big deal," he says, stopping to hurl a snowball at students as they walk outside into the slush. It's a refrain heard in other home. The Canadian Embassy says about 1,000 Canadians live in Russia. Eight serious crimes have been reported by Canadians so far this year, including four burglaries, two car thefts and two armed robberies. Protecting oneself from crime is a hot topic among expatriates.

"The criminal culture here is very arbitrary and arrogant," says a Western diplomat. "You. have to exercise extreme caution about where you go and who you mix with." Protkin says one of the fastest-growing criminal ele ments involve prostitutes who use drugs to disable a victim before robbing his apartment or hotel room. "Rule No. 1 for getting by in Moscow is be very wary of casual acquaintances," he says.

"And never, never trust a woman you meet in a bar or nightclub." Most offences are minor, such as car break-ins, on-the-job theft and warmings by gangs of children who surround a victim and grab for purse, pocketbook and camera. jBut' Russian officials are worried about the growing incidence of kidnapping, blackmail, extortion and vehicle hijackings. "Of course foreigners, who seem richer than most Russians, make a tempting target for criminals," he 'says. "Butjhe crime situation here is no worse than in any large Western city." for the remark. A spokesman for a group called the No Divorce Campaign said the latest poll proved the momentum was on their side.

"The fact of the matter is people are seeing through, the, government's arguments because they don't stand up," said David Stokes. "Our arguments stand up." That's not the way Ireland's housing minister, Liz McManus, sees things. McManus said the government has been forced to do battle against a campaign of misinformation and lies pitched in highly emotional terms. An example: billboards bearing the bleak prediction: Hello divorce. Bye-bye Daddy, posted near school playgrounds.

"The implication is, of course, that every father in the country is going to disappear when divorce comes in," McManus said Friday in an interview from Dublin. "It pulls the heart strings." Anti-divorce campaigners have also plastered the countryside with posters warning that-a Yes vote would mean taxes will rise 10 per cent to pay for extra social programs." "That just is not true," McManus insisted. Saturday at a downtown Indianapolis hotel for a two-day Sherlock Holmes symposium. Sherlockians, as devotees call themselves, will be able to attend presentations analysing the adventures of the pipe-smoking detective in the deerstalker hat and flowing cape. One discussion will include the evolving public perception of Holmes' sidekick Dr.

Watson. But don't take it too seriously, said Steven T. Doyle, a video producer, symposium organizer and no relation to the detective's creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. "The whole movement is sort of a literary in-joke," he said. yuasQ And it's not just in urban centres.

A similar survey in rural Manitoba also suggested the number of kids smoking grass has increased over, the past two years. "It's not perceived as being a really serious thing to get caught with a joint," says Palmer. The looser attitudes towards drugs marijuana in particular are in stark contrast to a decade ago, when former U.S. president Ronald Reagan announced a war on drugs while Brian Mulroney declared Canada was facing a drug epidemic. "A very high political priority (was) placed on the drug problem," says Garlick.

"Now we've gone back to more traditional concerns about the economy and other issues like crime and violence." But Layton said the decline could be attributed to a hike in prices and a recent Ontario wine promotion. Across the border, Quebecers were popping Beaujolias corks with the same "joie de vivre" as always. More than two thirds of the 360,000 bottles on hand were sold within the first six hours Thursday, a spokesman for the province said. In Nova Scotia, officials had lit-Jtle doubt folks would lap up the entire 500 cases of Beaujolais nouveau imported by the province's liquor commission. Since it usually takes three weeks to sell out, spokeswoman Yvonne Melanson said Friday it was a little early to tell if the boycott would have much impact.

"(But) There's no indication as yet" of any protest-related decline and some stores were reporting lineups, she said. Peter Rockwell at the Port of Wines store in Halifax- clearly wasn't worried. aomnJooi3 By Betsy Powell The Canadian Press TORONTO Just as listening to CDs, going to concerts and shooting pool are central to the lives of many Canadian teens, so too are rolling papers, bongs and hash pipes. Drugs, particularly cannabis, are making a comeback in high schools across the country, a trend which first became noticeable last year but has since grown significantly. Experts agree more kids are sparking up just as the federal government has passed legislation preventing police from fingerprinting people convicted of possessing small quanitites of cannabis, making a criminal record harder to trace.

But the experts aren't sure what's behind the increase, with Beauj olai By Brian Mckenna The Canadian Press If Canadians care a hoot about French nuclear tests in the South Pacific, you'd never tell it by the way they continue to drown their sorrows. The ballyhooed boycott of this year's Beaujolais nouveau, it ap-' pears, is something of a bust. Anti-nuclear activists around the woirld have attempted to put the squeeze on the French wine industry to protest continuing French nuclear weapons tests on Mururoa atoll in the South Pacific. A centrepiece of that protest has been the boycott against this year's Beaujolais nouveau, which by tradition goes on sale on the third Thursday of November. But a spot check across Canada showed sales of Beaujolais are about the same as always.

Even in places where the over-hyped (and some say overpriced) wine is moving more boycott fizzle across Canad a si parts of the country. "I've been at parties and the cops come and (kids) they just sit there and smoke a joint it's no big deal," says a 17-year-old student in Brandon, who recently stopped smoking dope every day. "At this age, your friends and your drugs are your best friends. That's your family." Studies suggest there's a greater tolerance of drug use among young people, says Richard Garlick of the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse in Ottawa. That's in keeping with a recent survey by Ontario's Addiction Research Foundation.

The number of young respondents who said they'd smoked pot within the last year almost doubled from 1993 to 1995. group's petition, and others left the store with only Italian or Canadian nouveaus. That left sales of the French product, which at about $13.50 a battle in Ontario is almost double the price of some Italian labels, relatively slow at that location. But it was a different story at another LCBO store near Parliament Hill. "It's; selling very well," said manager Derrick Mayson.

"There are certain areas, no doubt where nuclear testing protests may be going on, and affecting sales, but not here." The Liquor Control Board of Ontario confirmed that early sales were generally going as expected. "We've been tracking French wine sales to see if we'll see some impact (and) we really haven't seen a significant decline," said LCBO spokesman Chris Lay ton. Overall, sales of French wine are down about three per cent across the province. 1 1 I 1 LONDON (CP) Irish politicians and divorce activists anxiously tried to staunch the bleeding Friday as a new poll provided further evidence that the campaign to bring divorce to Ireland was in disarray. The Irish Marketing Surveys poll, conducted Wednesday, indicated sjupport for divorce had slipped to 47 per cent and opposition had risen to 39 per cent.

Fourteen per cent of respondents said they were unsure how they would vote. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus three per cent. The mere eight-point spread was in sharp contrast to the 34-point margin enjoyed by pro-divorce forces in late September There have been other signs the Yes side has been losing ground as Ireland heads toward the Nov. 24 vote on whether to strip the ban against divorce from the country's constitution. Finance Minister Ruairi Quinn snapped recently at a news conference in the worst gaffe of thev campaign to date.

Quinn, referring to an anti-divorce campaigner, agreed his opponent was a clever man, then added "so too was Hitler." The minister later apologized INDIANAPOLIS (AP) Here's a mystery Sherlock Holmes would love. In a world of DNA testing, forensic pathology and Court TV, why does a century-old fictional detective armed only with deductive reasoning still hold readers spellbound? "Partly it's the same appeal that any superhero has," says Chris Redmond of Ontario's University of Waterloo, who is author of In Bed With Sherlock Holmes. "And partly, it's just the joy of reading very well-written About 00 fans of the late 19th- century London sleuth will gather slowly, spokesmen are reluctant to blame the boycott. "The event itself is just starting to lose momentum," said Leslie Myers of the B.C. Liquor Distribution Branch.

Myers talked with managers of four liquor outlets and said sales were slow for three French nouveaus they were carrying. But it was no different for Italian and B.C. nouveaus which went on sale at the same time. "Like anything, it's hard to sustain a high level of excitment year after year after year," she said. In Ottawa, a handful of demonstrators gathered Thursday outside a liquor store in the capital's trendy neighborhood known as "We feel it's a good way of having an impact on their decisionmaking," said Richard Saunders of the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade.

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