At home after a long day at work, the craving consumes her.
It grips her body and leaves her shaking.
The woman picks up the phone to place her order, then sighs with relief. Her take-out will be ready in just a few minutes.

Most of it is handled through the phone, like all the wheeling and dealing, and all you really see are people meeting on the street. Somebody approaching a car, making a payment, doing a hand-to-hand, then the person drives off.
– Sgt. Dave Goddard

It’s not long before her doorbell rings. She grabs the package and, in seconds, she’s plunging the needle into her arm—the much needed shot of heroin.

It’s a scene that’s growing increasingly common around B.C. and the rest of the country, RCMP say.

They’re called Dial-A-Dope operations, and they’re setting up shop in many cities, even smaller centres like Prince George.

Instead of scouting the streets for drugs, users contact dealers through cell phones, pagers, and even the wireless BlackBerry devices. The two parties arrange to have the drugs dropped off at a specified location, and the drugs are often delivered right to the user’s door. Contact numbers for drug dealers get passed from user to user like a secret code.

RCMP recently arrested three people who were running such an operation in Prince George.

Spokesperson Const. Mike Caira says police have known about drug-delivery services in the city for a few years.

However, he says it’s difficult to say whether the phenomenon is growing in Prince George, because police catch so few of them. Trying to crack down on Dial-A-Dope rings is tough, Caira says. “You have to be able to follow it from point A to Point B and see that it is occurring…and waiting until the delivery happens so you can make the arrest,” he says.

In the Lower Mainland, drug delivery services are well established. Sgt. Dave Goddard, who’s with the Greater Vancouver Drug Section for the RCMP, says technology gave rise to this trend, especially when cell phones became common 15 years ago. “It’s a practical way for drug dealers to ply their trade,” he says. From the dealers’ perspective, he says there’s less chance of getting caught, if the deal doesn’t take place in public.

...if we get a hold of a phone number we might dial it up, try to set up a deal and try to consummate that deal with an arrest
– Sgt. Dave Goddard

“Most of it is handled through the phone, like all the wheeling and dealing, and all you really see are people meeting on the street. Somebody approaching a car, making a payment, doing a hand-to-hand, then the person drives off,” Goddard says.
The problem is growing worse as technology improves, he adds.

Goddard says the high-tech method is also allowing drugs to flow more easily into suburbs, with buyers calling ahead and arranging to pick up the drugs the next time they’re in the city.

He agrees with RCMP in Prince George that arresting people who deal drugs this way isn’t easy. The dealers are constantly on the move, he says, making deliveries all over town. It takes a large number of police officers to gather evidence on Dial-A-Dope rings, doing surveillance and following the dealers as they criss-cross town, Goddard notes.

However, there have been several police stings targeting large-scale drug-delivery operations across the country. “It takes considerable resources to be put in place… Sometimes they’re handled on a very low level type of way, whereas if we get a hold of a phone number we might dial it up, try to set up a deal and try to consummate that deal with an arrest,” Goddard explains.

During a recent raid, Halifax police and RCMP arrested 16 people in a Dial-A-Dope ring. It took them 14 months to cobble together enough evidence, though, and a lot of planning to co-ordinate arrests at 10 different locations around the city. Police in Halifax say the development is relatively new in Nova Scotia, but is more common in Western Canada.

And in Alberta, the presence of Dial-A-Dope operations is quickly expanding into small towns. A recent report by the province’s Criminal Intelligence Service says the problem will only get worse, as dealers try to escape police enforcement in Edmonton and Calgary.

RCMP in Red Deer have identified four separate drug-delivery rings, and say others have set up shop in even smaller communities.

RCMP say dealers are offering to deliver all types of drugs, from marijuana to crack, crank and Ecstasy. “You name it, you can buy it,” Goddard says.

Granted, addicts will just about do anything to get their drugs, but the easier we make it for them, the more apt [they’ll be] to take advantage of that
– Sgt. Dave Goddard

For addictions counsellors such as Patrick Zierten, the trend is worrisome. Zierten, the program director at Orchard Recovery Centre on Bowen Island, says dial-a-dope rings give drug addicts a convenient and readily available way to feed their habit.

“Granted, addicts will just about do anything to get their drugs, but the easier we make it for them, the more apt [they’ll be] to take advantage of that,” he says.

He says it also gives people continuous access to drugs, noting he’s seen more chain-using in recent years. “Crack runs can run anywhere from three to five days, and crystal [meth] runs, hell, they can run for two weeks sometimes.”

It’s hard to prove whether dial-a-dope operations have increased the use of drugs, Zierten says, but adds from what he’s heard, that’s probably the case.

Among the centre’s clients who are hard-drug users, he says about half have had their drugs delivered to them. Some dealers, he says, set-up elaborate operations, dispatching “runners” who are on stand-by to drop off drugs to clients.
“It’s like pizza delivery,” Zierten jokes.

But Zierten is serious about the damage these types of delivery services can do. Most of the centre’s clients are well educated, have good jobs and families, he says, and those are the types of people who gravitate toward using dial-a-dope services.

That way, he says they don’t have to venture into an unfamiliar part of town and risk someone they know seeing them. “[Other people] are on the streets. All they have to do is walk down to the corner, and they live down there, so they don’t really worry too much about anonymity.” Students who do drugs also end up using drug-delivery services frequently, he adds.

Zierten agrees with the police that cracking down on dealers is a huge challenge. In addition to technological advances, Zierten says enforcement against drug-dealing on the streets was what forced dealers to turn to cell phones and beepers. “It’s like pushing Jello up a hill. You can never do it. And just as you push one side, it pops out at another angle,” he says.