VICTORIA MAYOR NAMED TO DRUG TASK FORCE

Victoria Mayor Alan Lowe will soon be working more closely with the
province to address the issues of drug addiction and mental health in
the Capital Region and elsewhere in B.C.

During the Union of B.C. Municipalities AGM in Kelowna last week, Lowe
and four other B.C. mayors were appointed to a municipal-provincial
task force looking at ways of integrating programs that deal with drug
addiction and mental health issues.

The appointments come on the heels of an announcement that the InSite
safe injection site on Vancouver's Downtown East Side has been
successful in saving lives and directing addicts to treatment.

Asked whether he could see Victoria getting its own scaled-down safe
injection site in the near future, Lowe said it was "too early to tell."

"We're going to have to look at how we tackle this issue and what
funds are available," he said. "We've never had much funding to deal
with these problems. We hopefully can look at things like transition
housing to get people off the streets and go forward from there."

The others on the task force are Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell,
Kelowna Mayor Walter Gray, Surrey Mayor Doug McCallum and Prince
George Mayor Colin Kinsley.

The group will work with Premier Gordon Campbell and cabinet ministers
Murray Coell, Susan Brice and Brenda Locke on the inter-governmental
committee.