Pubdate: Thu, 15 Dec 2005
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Copyright: 2005, The Globe and Mail Company
Contact:  http://www.globeandmail.ca/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/168
Author: Jeff Gray
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/hr.htm (Harm Reduction)

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.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman