EX-TORY ORGANIZER TO LEAD MAYOR'S DRUG PROGRAM

Lois Johnson Will Head Plan To Provide Substitute Legal Drugs To
Cocaine Users

VANCOUVER - A former campaign organizer for federal Health Minister
Tony Clement has been named to drive forward Mayor Sam Sullivan's plan
to provide substitute legal drugs for cocaine users.

Lois Johnson, a long-time Conservative who was the B.C. co-chair of
Clement's leadership campaign, said she has agreed to take on the
complex project, aimed at providing an experimental drug treatment
program that is privately funded but somehow integrated with existing
public-health systems, to try to make progress on drug treatment and
crime reduction in Vancouver.

"I'm really passionate about the fact that we have to move forward on
treatment," said Johnson, who was also the chair of the Conservative
constituency association in Vancouver South until 10 days ago. She is
also a past board member of the Non-Partisan Association, Sullivan's
party.

Johnson will become the director of the non-profit society Inner
Change, which is still in the process of establishing its board and
filing papers for incorporation. She will be responsible for a
daunting set of challenges.

She acknowledged there is no other model she can think of for what
Sullivan is trying to do.

His efforts to single-handedly create a first-in-Canada experimental
drug treatment program with private money have baffled even some who
are in favour of a trial. Sullivan first began talking publicly about
the project a year ago.

The current plan is to set up the non-profit, raise privately the
half-million dollars a year that it would take to run even a modest
program, and somehow mesh that with Vancouver Coastal Health and the
doctors who will deliver the actual substitute drugs.

In addition, Johnson will need to get qualified medical personnel to
write a proposal for Health Canada to request an exemption from
existing policy so that Ritalin or other drugs used for attention
deficit disorder can be used as substitute drugs for cocaine and
crystal meth users.

No one in Canada has mounted this kind of trial yet, although one
researcher in the United States and others in Australia and Europe
have conducted small-scale trials with various amphetamine-type drugs.
Many addiction experts have encouraged Sullivan to promote this kind
of stimulant-maintenance trial for Vancouver, especially since it has
such a large cocaine-using population.

Currently, those drugs can only be prescribed for conditions like ADD
or narcolepsy. The B.C. College of Physicians has a policy prohibiting
doctors from prescribing those drugs for other purposes and doctors
who have done it in the past have been disciplined.

Health Canada may grant exemptions for scientific trials. Usually,
those exemptions are granted to research teams affiliated with major
medical or education institutions. The exemptions are supposed to be
granted strictly on the basis of scientific support and are not
supposed to be subject to political influence.

However, Sullivan says that he has had positive meetings with Clement
and that Clement has asked the mayor to pass on this proposal to him
personally, rather than just sending it to the Health Canada
bureaucracy.

Johnson said that she has had no meetings yet with Clement on this
subject.

In addition to Johnson, the project is also getting some assistance
from three prominent public health officials.

B.C.'s medical health officer Dr. Perry Kendall and Dr. John
Blatherwick and Dr. David Marsh of Vancouver Coastal Health have all
agreed to help vet any proposal put forward by Inner Change.

Kendall and Blatherwick said they don't have a lot of details yet on
how the program might work, in terms of which drugs would be used or
how it would be delivered.

Both men also said that it's very unlikely that that kind of trial
could start off with 700 people, as Sullivan has envisioned.

But they want to support what they think is a worthwhile effort by a
political leader.

"We like the concept," said Blatherwick. "We don't know yet how far we
can go with the concept. But we don't want to stop trying to make a
difference."

THE MAYOR'S PROPOSAL

Mayor Sam Sullivan's drug program would:

- - Set up a private experimental drug treatment program.

- - Raise privately the half-million dollars a year that it would take
to run the program.