TORY SENATOR ATTACKS SULLIVAN'S DRUG-TREATMENT PLAN

OTTAWA -- Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan's plan to get drug addicts off
the streets, which received major backing this week from former
Conservative MP John Reynolds, has come under attack by another
senior federal Tory.

Senator Gerry St. Germain, a former cabinet minister and one-time
Vancouver policeman, denounced Sullivan's bid to establish a
substitute treatment program.

The trial would provide replacement drugs for addicts hooked on
stimulants like crystal meth and crack cocaine.

St. Germain, who criticized the Inner Change initiative in the
Senate, said the real answer is more police on the street and greater
funding for treatment facilities that can get addicts off drugs for good.

"I don't see this as an acceptable way of dealing with anything,"
said St. Germain, a former undercover officer working on morality and
drug cases.

"It's like alcohol. If a man's got an alcohol problem you don't just
give him more alcohol."

In the Senate Wednesday, he urged the Tory government to oppose the plan.

"The Inner Change proposal is one further step in an insidious
campaign to change cultural attitudes and to label those afflicted
with substance abuse disease as somehow permanently disabled and
incapable of ever making lifestyle changes.

"Such a policy direction offers no compassion, little hope and huge
risk," he said in a statement.

"I urge the minister of health and the federal government to adopt
the national drug strategy that includes increased federal support
for abstinence-based residential treatment programs in Vancouver and
elsewhere -- a strategy that is founded on hope."

Reynolds, Harper's 2006 election campaign co-chairman, gave
Sullivan's initiative a boost by agreeing to sit on the board of the
non-profit society that will be used to raise funds for the proposed
Substitution Treatment Research Trial.