METHADONE CLINIC WINS APPEAL

Facility Finally Has New Home

Now that an addictions-treatment clinic has overcome its last hurdle
and has a permanent home, its director wants to conduct research to
prove that his methadone treatment is making Calgary safer, not more
dangerous.

All year, potential neighbours who feared how the Second Chance
Recovery Clinic would transform their communities forced the facility
to relocate.

The Second Chance Recovery Clinic settled into a strip mall in
Foothills Industrial Park earlier this month, and on Friday the city's
subdivision and development appeal board said it could stay,
dismissing the protests of three nearby businesses that disapproved of
a methadone-prescribing facility in their midst.

Bill Leslie, the clinic's director, has long tried to allay opponents
by arguing that his facility's counselling and treatment benefits
society by ensuring fewer people need to steal or commit other crimes
to fund their addiction to prescription or illicit drugs.

He said police in Red Deer have praised that city's methadone clinic,
and he wants to prove his case.

"We're going to start with the baseline for the last five years, and
for the next year we'll be doing on research on (whether) methadone
maintenance actually decreases crime," he told reporters. "And that's
what we've been saying for years and years."

Calgary police Insp. Richard Hinse lent his strong support to Second
Chance, which operated for several months this year in Braeside
without a single police incident.

A neighbouring liquor store in Foothills complained that a clinic
customer had spit in the parking lot, prompting the facility's staff
to cheekily post a sign advising people not to spit, belch or break
wind.

"We (support) this centre," Hinse said. "The people going here are
trying to get well."

The clinic had to twice threaten to leave the city this year if it
wasn't wanted anywhere.

After its downtown lease expired last fall, the clinic set up in a
northeast industrial park, only to be forced to leave because of
zoning and community concerns.

It then moved, unannounced, to Braeside, and in that southwest
community it faced hostile residents who feared the clinic's
association with drugs, even though the methadone is distributed at an
off-site pharmacy.

This fall, Second Chance sought a home in a former addiction
specialist's office in Foothills, far from any residences, but still
faced three appeals. The city's appeal board dismissed all of them
because none concerned the development permit's true purpose, a
relaxation from parking rules.

No appellant showed up to argue against Second Chance,
either.

Advocates for the clinic argued that it doesn't need many parking
spaces because 80 per cent of its clients get there on the bus routes
that arrive at least every half-hour during Second Chance operating
hours.