GROUP PANS TORY ANTI-DRUG STRATEGY

VANCOUVER - Critics of the Conservative government's new
anti-drug plan are calling it everything from naive to politically
opportunistic and a threat to the civil liberties of Canadians.

A coalition of Vancouver health and social groups says prison terms
and attempts to scare users straight won't solve Canada's illegal
drug problem.

"You just can't incarcerate your way out of this," former Vancouver
mayor Philip Owen, a member of the Beyond Prohibition Coalition,
said yesterday. "The United States locks down 2.3 million people every night."

Owen, an architect of Vancouver's drug safe-injection site, told a
news conference the Tory government's adoption of policies similar
to the failed war on drugs in the U.S. is "uninformed."

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who has been skeptical of the
safe-injection site's claimed harm-reduction benefits, promised
Thursday to put more drug dealers behind bars and help drug users
kick their habits in the $64-million anti-drug plan.

Another coalition member, former B.C. provincial court judge Jerry
Paradis, said illegal drugs have been used as a political gimmick by
prime ministers for decades.

"Stephen Harper has just discovered the political usefulness of
drugs finally and that all of this is posturing leading up to a
federal election," Paradis said.

The issue is personal for drug addict Dean Wilson, who showed up
late and dishevelled to speak to the media.

He said he's still trying to comprehend what the government is
attempting to do. "If he came down here and saw what was going on, I
think he would change his mind," Wilson said, pointing to
Vancouver's gritty Downtown Eastside, Ground Zero of the West
Coast's drug problem.

On the eve of Harper's announcement, the government announced
another extension of the safe-injection site's special Health Canada
licence to operate, which expires at the end of the year.

Supporters had been worried Ottawa would not renew it.