SAM'S CLUMSY DAMAGE CONTROL

On Tuesday morning, an "urgent" email was sent by the director of
Mayor Sam Sullivan's new private drug substitution charity to all the
board members of the organization.

Sullivan and his crew at city hall have been in serious damage
control for the past 10 days. This email is evidence of their scramble.

The problem started when Sullivan told several reporters, including
the Courier's Mike Howell, that the supervised injection site is
"temporary." He'd like to see it gone once his new drug substitution
program is running. That program is know as CAST, Chronic Addiction
Substitute Treatment. He told Howell he was pitching his idea of
giving legal drugs to addicts as an alternative to the injection site
because the Tories won't support the consumption of illegal drugs.
"I've tried to structure my proposals around the thinking of the
people in Ottawa," he said.

Sullivan's comments made waves right across the country. As I wrote
last week, the injection site supervisor, Dr. David Marsh, was
incredulous. He said he thought the idea that the site would
disappear once the new program was in the works was "off the table."

Marsh also heads up the clinical advisory committee for Sullivan's
privately funded drug-substitution charity. He is in the midst of
designing five research projects for proposals to substitute
pharmaceuticals for illegal stimulants including crack, cocaine and
crystal meth. His support is essential for that scheme to have even a
fighting chance.

At some point after Sullivan's comment became public and the furor
started to build, the panicked response from the mayor's office
started. There was a news release announcing a plan to "convene the
Four Pillars Coalition," the group that met regularly with former
mayors Philip Owen and Larry Campbell.

But there was nothing new. Plans have been made for months now. Still
no dates have been fixed. So why the release? Then in the second last
line you discovered the real purpose of this announcement. "In the
coming months I will be working hard to ensure Vancouver's [injection
site] remains open," says Sullivan.

Even the usually slow-footed opposition managed to land a blow
questioning the mayor's commitment to the injection site.

A few days later Sullivan clarified for one reporter what he meant by
the site being "temporary." He defined it as at least "10 more years.

But the damage control didn't stop there. On Monday, the mayor's
office told a reporter Sullivan would be putting forward a motion
"this week" to endorse a three-and-a-half year extension of the site.
And the mayor now had a "campaign" planned to save the injection site.

That story appeared in a local paper Tuesday, the morning council
met. Again, there was evidence that this was done in a rush. There
was no motion Tuesday. Late Tuesday afternoon, the mayor's media guy,
David Hurford, assured me the motion had not even been written, let
alone discussed by the NPA caucus.

This brings us back to that "urgent" email sent by CAST director Lois
Johnson earlier that same day, at 11:13 in the morning. It was a
draft copy of the very motion, moved by Kim Capri and seconded by
Sullivan. Johnson said it was going to council "ASAP."

The motion is a clumsy trap for the opposition on council but typical
of the way Sullivan operates. It's a roller skating tour of the
supervised injection site's history, carefully ignoring work done by
Larry Campbell to secure the site and funding. It also outlines the
wish list plans for CAST. It's a list that has never been presented
to council let alone debated.

Then it asks council to effectively endorse the actions of the
private charity-over which council has no control or information-and
support the extension of the supervised injection site.

Sullivan created a crisis. He hopes to get out of it by blaming his
opponents who would likely balk at passing the motion. Instead, they
planned to have one of their own.