CITY TO STUDY SAFE DRUG-USE SITES

Councillor Criticizes Conservative Government's Drug Strategy For
'Taking Giant Steps Back' In Reducing Addiction

Toronto public-health officials say they are going ahead with a
long-promised study of the feasibility of safe drug-use sites in the
city, even as the federal government says it will appeal a B.C. court
ruling that allows Vancouver's controversial safe-injection site to
stay open.

While city council passed a wide-reaching drug strategy in 2005
calling for a study of the concept, Toronto Public Health only
recently received provincial funding to strike a committee to start
looking into the idea and consulting experts, police, community
members and drug users.

The committee's report on the idea, and any recommendations, remain
six to 12 months away, said Shaun Hopkins, manager of the Toronto
Public Health's current needle-exchange program, which also
distributes "safer" crack kits.

"We'll be talking to community members, drug users and anybody who
would be affected by it," Ms. Hopkins said, adding that the city's
current needle exchange, aimed at curtailing the spread of HIV among
drug users, distributes 700,000 free needles a year.

City Councillor Gord Perks - who co-chairs the city's drug strategy
implementation task force - said the city should "start a
conversation" with Torontonians on the idea, which proponents say
allows addicts to use drugs in a safe environment, instead of on the
street, reducing the risks of transmitting diseases and overdoses.

"We already have a lot of safe consumption sites in the city of Toronto:
They're called
bars," Mr. Perks said. "Alcohol is an addictive substance that can cause all
kinds of
behavioural problems and actually causes more harm, in terms of harm to the
community,
danger, violent behaviour and so on, than any substance."

He criticized the Conservative government's approach to drugs and its
recent drug strategy. "The federal government ... has been taking
giant steps back from where the rest of the world is, in terms of
figuring out how to reduce the harms caused by drug use."

Toronto's drug strategy places restrictions on any future safe drug
consumption site, including that any study of the idea must include
input from businesses and local residents, and that the federal and
provincial governments and police must all agree to it.

City Councillor Kyle Rae, the driving force behind the city's drug
strategy when it passed three years ago, said Toronto's drug problems
are different than Vancouver's, where the Insite safe-injection site
serves heroin addicts.

In Toronto, crack cocaine is much more prevalent than heroin among
street drug users. Drug abuse is spread across the city in several
neighbourhoods, with nowhere near the concentration in Vancouver's
Downtown Eastside.

Mr. Rae said a safe-inhalation site for crack users - such as one that
operates in Frankfurt - is worth exploring.

Ms. Hopkins also said one possibility for Toronto would be small
safe-use centres in various sites across the city.