TORIES GET TOUGHER ON DRUGS

OTTAWA -- The Harper government's new anti-drug strategy is expected
to take a tough approach to illicit drugs, including cracking down on
grow-ops and pushers and retreating from "harm reduction" measures
such as safe injection sites for addicts.

The new strategy, slated to be announced next week, is also
understood to include more money for treatment and a national
drug-use prevention campaign.

The federal budget last March offered a glimpse of the strategy by
allocating an additional $64 million over two years for enforcement,
treatment and prevention. But the budget figures did not mention
harm-reduction measures, which aim to limit the spread of infectious
diseases through substance abuse.

"They haven't explicitly said they are getting rid of harm reduction,
but the budget numbers speak for themselves," said Leon Mar,
spokesperson for the Canadian HIV-AIDS Legal Network. "There is no
money for harm reduction, which is quite ominous for what will be."

Joanne Csete, the network's executive director, recently wrote in a
letter to parliamentarians that the Conservatives are contemplating
"a U.S.-style war on drugs, an approach that has proven time and time
again to be counter-productive and a tragic waste of public funds."

Of the new money allocated in the federal budget, $22 million would
go to law enforcement efforts to crack down on marijuana grow
operations and to catch and convict drug dealers. Drug treatment
programs would get a boost of $32 million, including money for
research aimed at treating methamphetamine addicts.

And another $10 million would be spent on a prevention campaign for
young people and their parents. Tony Cannavino, president of the
Canadian Police Association, said a national "say-no-to-drugs"
campaign would counter a perception among young people that marijuana
is legal, in light of a failed Liberal bid to decriminalize the
possession of small amounts of the drug.

The new Conservative strategy is also expected to endorse
drug-treatment courts, which already exist in Vancouver, Edmonton,
Regina, Winnipeg, Toronto and Ottawa. Instead of criminal sanctions,
drug addicts can be ordered into treatment programs.

Canada is currently operating under a 20-year-old national drug
strategy that has been criticized for a lack of direction, targets
and measurable results. The government spends $385 million a year
under the strategy, most of it on law enforcement measures such as
police investigations, prosecutions and border controls.

A large share of the spending also goes to treatment, prevention and
harm-reduction measures such as needle-exchange programs, in which
addicts trade dirty needles for sterile ones, and a supervised
injection site in Vancouver, where addicts can legally inject
themselves with the help of medical professionals.

The Conservatives have been skeptical about the supervised injection
site, saying the government shouldn't be in the business of
facilitating drug abuse. The site opened on a trial basis four years
ago. Last September, Health Minister Tony Clement ignored this
department's advice to renew the site's licence for another 31/2
years, electing instead to give it only a one-year reprieve.

The drug strategy is expected to be accompanied sometime soon by
proposed legislation to impose minimum mandatory prison terms for
serious drug crimes, a Conservative election promise that has been
delayed for more than a year.