WAR ON CRYSTAL METH WILL COST MILLIONS

Premier's Task Force On Street Drug To Recommend More Treatment For
Addicts, Crackdown On Dealers, Education Campaign

EDMONTON - Alberta must spend several million dollars to keep youth
off crystal methamphetamine and treat addicts, a provincial
government report will say next month.

Premier Ralph Klein's task force on crystal meth will recommend the
province set up more elaborate treatment programs and a broad
education campaign, says Mary Anne Jablonski, MLA for Red Deer North
and the lone politician on the 12-member force led by the premier's
wife, Colleen Klein.

"I think that the most controversial thing about the recommendations
will be the cost," Jablonski said Tuesday.

Dan MacLennan, president of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees
and another task force panelist, said that cost will likely total
more than $10 million.

After several months of provincewide consultations, the task force
recommendations will call for more police officers dedicated to
busting dealers and preventing the highly addictive and dangerous
drug from reaching youths' hands.

MacLennan said the exact costs and recommendations will be finalized
later this month and likely released in September.

"Things like treatment facilities or increasing treatment facilities,
that quickly costs large amounts of money."

Since Klein has promised to retire as premier next month, the report
will likely come out in the thick of the Progressive Conservative
leadership race.

Responsibility for dealing with it will fall to Klein's successor.

Jablonski and MacLennan suggested the task force may call for more
forced treatment for meth-addled youth and for terms longer than the
five-day court-ordered detox program which began last year.

"The kids themselves ... said that's not long enough," MacLennan said.

A plan for longer mandatory youth treatment, proposed by Jablonski in
a private member's bill last year, was nixed after warnings it would
violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

More than a dozen young Albertans were sent for the five-day session
in July, the program's first month.

The premier and his wife have said they hope strong action in the
fight against meth's destructive chemical stew would be a crowning
part of the Klein legacy.

"No human being should be putting fertilizer and Drano and iodine,
all mixed together with a little ephedrine, into their system,"
Colleen Klein said last year.

She said she wants "to make sure those little eight- and 10-year-olds
never, ever, ever go near it."

The task force will look at some successful local solutions to
tackling meth use, such as Hinton's door-to-door awareness campaign
and Drayton Valley's police focus on meth and meth-related crime. The
federal government will be asked to restrict sales of some of the
products used to make the drug.