COUNCIL ENDORSES DRUG STRATEGY

City council has endorsed a controversial drug strategy that will
allow health workers to hand out clean crack pipes to users and that
authorizes city staff to study whether Toronto needs a "supervised
consumption site."

The strategy also calls for a 24-hour crisis centre for drug users,
more education and outreach programs, and for police to target
"high-level traffickers." But most of yesterday's marathon debate
focused on the plan's "harm reduction" planks.

Council approved the plan 24-15, after narrowly voting down attempts
to remove the most controversial elements. The decision was made
after a day that at times sounded more like a therapy session than a
debate as councillors alluded to family members who have battled addictions.

In a lengthy speech about how drug addiction had affected his family,
Councillor Rob Ford warned that approving a safe-consumption site
would only "attract gun-toting bandits." In April, Mr. Ford's sister
was shot in the face in an incident at the family home.

"When you talk to a person that was actually shot," he said on the
council floor, "and they tell you the story, and you know what? . . .
This is the last thing they want, is to make this a place where they
can go get high at taxpayers' expense."

Mayor David Miller, who visited Frankfurt's safe-injection site last
year, supported the drug strategy and cautioned that it calls only
for staff to study whether one could be set up here, not to establish
one. But he said the Frankfurt site has transformed a formerly
drug-infested part of that city's downtown.

It may turn out that a safe-injection site might not be appropriate
for Toronto, Mr. Miller said, since it is an approach geared to
heroin addiction and this city's main drug problem is crack cocaine.

Councillor Kyle Rae, who chaired the committee that drafted the plan,
said Toronto, or agencies that it funds, will start looking at
targeted programs to distribute clean crack pipes to drug users.