COUNCIL PASSES CONTROVERSIAL DRUG STRATEGY

Etobicoke Councillor Speaks Openly Of Family And Drug Difficulties As
He Opposes Safe Injection Site

Etobicoke Councillor Rob Ford spoke candidly about his own family and
their difficulties with drug abuse this week as he stood to oppose
Toronto's now-approved drug plan.

The plan would, among other things, see the city study the possibility
of opening a safe injection site somewhere in Toronto.

Ford (Ward 2, Etobicoke North) made it clear that for him, the issue
was personal.

Earlier this year, Ford's sister survived being shot in the face, and
he referred to that incident in his emotional speech.

"You know that the day is going to come that either a person is going
to be dead or in jail," Ford said. "You go to sleep every night and
you can't sleep, you wake up, you pace, you don't know what to do
next. All of a sudden you get the phone call that something's
happened. Well, I got the phone call, and what I saw, I can't deal
with it to this day."

Ford said that creating injection houses would simply open the
neighbourhood up to "gun-toting bandits" as well as prostitution and
petty crime.

And he said that those sites would simply make it easier for addicts
who had bottomed out to continue their addiction rather than seek treatment.

In an at-times graphic speech, Ford chided his colleagues on council
for making decisions on the issue without having first-hand experience.

"When you talk to the people that were actually shot, and they tell
you the story, you know that this is the last thing that they
want...to make this a place where they can get high on taxpayers'
expense...on anyone's expense," he said.

"It's a disease inside of them. They will stick a gun to someone's
head or rob a bank teller, and they won't think twice. Because when
they bounce up and down in their bed, vomiting all over themselves,
defecating in their pants just to get that fix ... it's something that
. I wouldn't want you guys to go through. I wouldn't want you to
come and see some of the stuff that someone who's gone through it all
has seen.

"This is probably the hardest issue I had to deal with," he
said.

Ford was one of those who opposed the drug plan, which nevertheless
went through.

The plan has a total of 66 recommendations for dealing with drug and
alcohol abuse - recommendations that included planning so that
licensed bars were not concentrated in single neighbourhoods and a
number of requests for changes to legislation at higher orders of
government.

But just a few recommendations dominated the debate: the plan to study
creating injection/inhalation sites for heroin and crack cocaine
users; a boost to the city's harm reduction program that would see
health workers hand out free crack-smoking kits, in the way that they
hand out hypodermic needles now; and to a lesser extent, a move to
support the decriminalization of the possession of small amounts of
marijuana.

Those items were approved in close votes.

Those in favour argued the so-called harm reduction measures were
about more than simply encouraging addicts to quit.

"There is a large public health component that runs through this
entire strategy - it's not only harm reduction but also disease
reduction," said Ward 30 Councillor Paula Fletcher (Toronto-Danforth).
"It's not here because we want to promote drug use, legal or otherwise."

Ward 27 Councillor Kyle Rae (Toronto City Centre-Rosedale) pointed out
the most controversial aspect of the plan - the creation of safe
injection/inhalation sites - was not even up for approval at the meeting.

"If we do this, the city, the provincial government, the federal
government and the police all have to agree to it," Rae said. "I think
the fear-mongering is inappropriate - there are a lot of hurdles to go
through."