VANCOUVER - Mayor Sam Sullivan has introduced a new approach to fighting drug addiction and cleaning up the city's crime problem with a project that could surpass what's been tried in other cities around the world.
The project is a research trial that aims to help addicts by substituting orally administered prescription medication for their illegal street drugs.
Former drug addicts say the Chronic Addiction Substitution Treatment research project, or CAST, may be the answer for people spiralling down a deadly path.
The treatment program would be available for addicts who volunteer through various agencies including those in the drug-riddled Downtown Eastside and Insite, North America's only supervised injection site.
As part of their treatment, volunteers would also be provided with counselling and resources for mental health issues, housing and possibly employment.
Sullivan told a news conference Monday that drug addiction is destroying lives and communities as people commit crimes to get money for their next fix.
He pointed to aggressive panhandling, auto theft, shoplifting and property crime as some of the social blights eroding life in a city that's set to host the 2010 Winter Olympics.
Sullivan said the project needs political will if the city is to solve a longstanding problem that's getting worse.
"This project is more important than partisan politics and that is why you will see people from all major political parties and all sectors of society involved,'' he told a gathering that drew former drug addicts and support groups for those still caught in a web of drug dependency.
The safe injection site is currently in an operating limbo because the Health Canada exemption that has allowed it to distribute heroin was only extended until the end of this year.
However, this trial doesn't need approval from Health Canada because it is prescribing legal pharmaceutical drugs.
Former Conservative MP John Reynolds is co-chairing the board of the Inner Change Society, which will fund and manage the research trial set to start in the fall in conjunction with Vancouver's new drug courts.
Sullivan said the upcoming Olympics aren't driving the agenda to come up with a new drug strategy but those behind the project have given themselves a deadline of 2010 to put something solid in place.
"I can tell you many Olympic cities use the technique of bussing people out of the community before the Games,'' he said. "I do not want to use that as a solution for Vancouver.''
Valerie Coles, whose son was addicted to cocaine for seven years before heroin took over his life, said her son credited methadone for saving his life and she now wants others to get the help they need with whatever medication works for them.
She said it's time addicts weren't seen as junkies and losers but rather as people who need medical intervention to save them from falling into crime to support their habits.
Dr. David Marsh, an addiction medicine expert with the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, said methadone doesn't work for everyone so the clinical trial would look into other medications.
"Methadone is not an option for stimulant dependence such as cocaine,'' he said.
Marsh said Vienna has studied slow-release morphine while in Italy, oral heroin has been studied.
"Almost all of those studies have been small, single-site studies for short periods of time and I think there's an opportunity for us to do a larger, more definitive study here in Canada,'' he said.
"The trials that have been done in Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and are currently underway in Canada and the U.K. are all examples of prescribing pharmaceutical grade pure heroin to people who are using illegal heroin,'' he said.
Vancouver would build on existing research with a larger trial "than has been done anywhere in the world and in a more comprehensive way.''
Marsh said that besides determining the types and amounts of drugs that addicts would be prescribed, the trial would also have to ensure people aren't injecting or selling the drugs they're given.
Dr. John Blatherwick, one of three physicians on the treatment program's medical advisory committee, said he's convinced most addicts would be keen to participate because they won't be shunned.
"Most of them know they have a problem and most of them know that a continuing down the line from injection drugs can lead to death from HIV, from hepatitis C, from things that are in those concoctions that they're sticking in their arms.''
Sue Davis, a sex-trade worker and spokeswoman for PACE, the Prostitution Alternatives Counselling and Education Society, said she thinks the drug substitution trial "is a great idea.''
But Davis, 39, said drugs, to some extent, drive the economy in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
"What will the Honduran crack dealers do, will they step it up to extortion or armed robbery, things like that?
"On the other hand this is a great initiative to try to eliminate that need for the money that drives sex workers into positions where they might take chances they might normally not have taken to feed their addiction.
"I had four heart attacks doing crack 12 years ago and in the end . . . I did heroin and cocaine,'' she said, adding the new program would have helped her kick the habit sooner.
