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Police across Western Canada are seeing a serious spike in encounters with the dangerous street drug methamphetamine, prompting one veteran Calgary cop to compare it the surge of crack cocaine in the 1990s.

“I’ve got 30 years with the police service. My experiences have been involved with organized crime and drug trafficking, and I’ve never seen a drug take over like this has — not since crack cocaine became popular in the mid-90s,” said Insp. Kevin Forsen with the Calgary Police Service.

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The number backs his claim, as incident rates surrounding methamphetamine in Calgary have skyrocketed by a whopping 536 per cent in the last five years.

Numbers in 2018 have reached up to 314 drug incidents by the third-quarter — more than one per day, according to a Calgary police report, where the five-year annual average was only 53 incidents.

Methamphetamine use is leading to dangerous encounters for officers throughout the province, Alberta Serious Incident Response Team executive director Sue Hughson said.