RCMP drug and organized crime awareness Cpl. Richard De Jong did not meet Erin Spanevello in her life but in a manner of speaking the former member of the Bowen Island detachment and Spanevello are working together to save lives here and elsewhere.
The 21-year-old Spanevello was a part-time model who had been admitted to college - she would have started this month - to train in graphic design and marketing. She was a straight A student with a big smile and a big heart who had many friends.
Her parents say she was excited about her future.
At a party last May in Vancouver Spanevello, who grew up in a small town, was offered a drug called ecstasy, one the RCMP corporal said is readily available and that many people mistakenly believe is a harmless, recreational drug.
Spanevello made a terrible choice and took the drug and a few hours later she was dead.
It's a choice some Bowen kids, De Jong reports, are having to make on island, and he and Erin's parents are using her story on a national ecstasy awareness campaign to educate people on why saying no is the only choice.
"Erin was killed by ecstasy and ecstasy is here," said De Jong, who still lives on Bowen. "At a very recent party on Bowen I have knowledge that someone showed up with a bag of 25 e-tabs and started giving them out for free."
He says ecstasy tabs are cheap and dealers routinely buy large quantities and give out free samples.
The people who put this drug together make it attractive and safe looking, De Jong says, and he has a book of photos of ecstasy pills and they have comfortable-looking, hip and familiar logos on them: a butterfly, a dolphin, a Calvin Klein logo, the Nike logo, Happy Faces and, in upper case, the word SEX.
Had Erin Spanevello known ecstasy is a chemical cocktail often including methamphetamine, and that methamphetamine is a dangerous drug that once made up 9 per cent of ecstasy but now, as De Jong reports, often makes up 72 per cent of the drugs composition, she almost certainly would have made a different choice.
De Jong points out that even without methamphetamine in a tab, ecstasy can still kill. He also says that with or without methamphetamine ecstasy causes great harm, including, but not limited to, severe depression and brain damage thought to be irreversible.
He also emphasizes these drugs are made for profit and not made by pharmaceutical companies, so "there is no quality control, no dosage control and no safe amount to take."
"You're playing Russian Roulette when you're taking these drugs," De Jong said.
Even if the victim is rushed to the hospital they frequently cannot be saved and the RCMP E-Aware website ( drugawareness.bc.rcmp.gc.ca ) says of the drug: "Ecstasy disrupts the body's natural ability to regulate temperature, blood pressure and heart rate, which may cause severe complications leading to possible sudden death."
There are also parties on Bowen, De Jong said, with cocaine and other drugs and he wants to get the message out that not just ecstasy is lethal, but that using mood-altering substances - including alcohol - is dangerous and potentially deadly.
He believes that creating awareness of the dangers of these substances can change how young people look at them, and points out there are already many young people on Bowen who do not use drugs or alcohol at all.
Along with parents "engaging in their kids' lives" he feels awareness is a big step toward helping young people, like Erin, choose not to drink or do drugs.
"You can happily go through life without having to mood alter," De Jong points out.
