MAYOR PUSHES SUBSTITUTE DRUG PROGRAM

Supplying legal drugs in pill form will allow city to close injection
site, Sam Sullivan says

Vancouver will be able to close down its supervised-injection site
for drug users once a new program for providing substitute legal
drugs gets going, according to Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan.

Sullivan said that's the argument he's been making to the federal
Conservative government, in order to get their support for his
ambitious drug-treatment plan, which involves giving substitute legal
drugs in pill form to addicts, as well as support for keeping the
injection site open for now.

"I would never see [the injection site] as a long-term solution,"
said Sullivan. "We know there's 90-per-cent Hep C and 30-per-cent HIV
among injection drug users. The reality is needles are not a good way
to take drugs."

Sullivan's hope is that within 18 months a minimum of 1,000 people
will be getting substitute drugs in five separate trials. Two of the
trials will provide people with a new substitute for heroin; the
other three will supply different kinds of drugs that are being
proposed as substitutes for cocaine and crystal meth.

"I believe that 1,000 [people in these trials] will not make the
supervised-injection site redundant, that it still has a very
valuable service for society as we transition. It needs to be there
as an essential recruitment site for [the substitution trials.] But I
do believe it is a temporary measure."

Sullivan said the federal government may be willing to extend the
necessary permits for the injection site, which are due to expire in
December, because he's been able to convince them it's only a
transitional tool that won't be necessary once more people are
enrolled in the drug-substitution trials.

He acknowledged that getting people to stop using needles may be
difficult, because of the culture of drug-using in Vancouver that
emphasizes "feel the steel."

"But now what we're asking is not that they 'just say no'.

"It's that they change the culture. It's much more possible to ask
people to change the culture of their drug use versus stop their drug use."

Since shortly after taking office late in 2005, Sullivan has been
working on his own to obtain funding, support and government approval
for experimental trials to give various substitute drugs to addicts.

He has raised money, set up a non-profit group called Inner Change
Society, and recruited people like former Conservative MP and former
NDP MLA Joy MacPhail to sit on the board. Lois Johnson, a
Conservative party organizer who has campaigned for current Health
Minister Tony Clement, is the executive director. So far, the group
has not identified a medical agency that would deliver the program, a
location or the source of funding.

Sullivan said he is spending a lot of his discretionary time and
energy working on the project because "I see the payoffs for the
citizens: dramatic reduction in crime, dramatic reduction in
homelessness. I see many of the Project Civil City goals achieved in
large part through [this]."