TREAT ADDICTION AS 'DISABILITY': MAYOR

Sullivan Wants To Talk Drugs With Harper

Drug addiction is a disability that needs management rather than
being considered an illness or a crime, Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan
said Monday.

"Is drug addiction a sickness? A short-term problem you fix?"
Sullivan said in his inaugural address to council.

"Or does it more resemble a disability -- a long-term problem you
manage? I believe it is the latter," he said. "We must be more
aggressive developing strategies for management rather than leaving
this problem in the hands of organized crime."

It was Sullivan's strongest statement since the beginning of his
victorious mayoral election campaign about the need for a new
approach to drug addiction, and he went further than either of his
predecessors, Larry Campbell or Philip Owen.

Sullivan also said he wants to "have a conversation" with
Conservative leader Stephen Harper to convince Harper of the value of
the city's controversial safe injection site, in the wake of comments
Harper made on the weekend about drug use.

In a speech in Burnaby during a stop in the federal election
campaign, Harper vowed to crack down on drugs by imposing stiffer
penalties, and he criticized former mayor Campbell's soft stance on drugs.

"We as a government will not use taxpayers' money to fund drug use.
That is not the strategy we will pursue," Harper said, raising the
question of whether a Conservative federal government would cut
funding to Vancouver's safe-injection site.

"I don't believe it was the best thing for me to hear," Sullivan said
Monday of Harper's comments, "but I would like to discuss it with
him. I would try to convince him otherwise," said Sullivan.

Although it is the provincial government, not the federal government,
that has provided the basic operating money for the safe-injection
site, the federal government's role is key because the site needs an
exemption from the federal health ministry in order to allow
currently illegal drugs on the premises. The federal government also
provided $1.5 million for research and evaluation costs over the
first three years.