PUTTING PUSHERS OUT OF WORK

Drugs-For-Addicts Trials Will Clean Up The Street

Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan says his controversial plan to supply
substitute prescription drugs to addicts will rob drug dealers of $50
million in profits and put hundreds of them out of work.

The mayor made the claim while boasting to businessmen yesterday that
the research trials he is championing will help rid the city of crime
and street disorder.

Sullivan said that when the five trials now being planned are "fully
implemented," the drug trade will have a "$50-million-per-year
reduction in profit" and "hundreds of dealers" will be put out of business.

His spokesman later said the figures were calculated by Sullivan and
members of the Chronic Addiction Substitution Treatment team, based
on the number of addicts the trials would enrol and the money they
now spend on drugs.

The CAST trials would offer oral prescription medicine to addicts now
injecting illegal street drugs.

Health Canada has yet to approve the research trials, which would
analyze the effect on both the user and the community.

Sullivan has sold the plan as a unique way to reduce the open drug
market, property crime and aggressive panhandling.

The plan prompted controversy when he announced it would be the
largest trial in the world, enrolling 700 addicts -- far more than
the 30 to 40 that medical researchers had said were likely. The trial
could cost as much as $1.5 million.

Sullivan's prediction about its effect on crime had heads nodding
yesterday as he spoke to members of the Downtown Vancouver Business
Improvement Association, which sponsored his third "state of the
city" address -- his last before November's municipal elections.

The business group was successful last month in obtaining almost
$900,000 in city money to expand its "ambassadors" program, which
dispatches red-jacketed private security guards to patrol business districts.

Sullivan pointed to his party's freeze on business taxes, his success
in settling a lengthy civic strike and progress on providing social
housing as highlights of the past year.