As a battle brews over the future of Vancouver's controversial safe-injection facility for addicts, the city's mayor is advocating for a substitute-drug strategy that he says eventually will make the supervised program unnecessary.

The Vancouver Sun reported June 6 that Mayor Sam Sullivan is trying to convince Canada's Conservative government to back his plan to give legal substitute drugs to opiate, cocaine, and methamphetamine addicts.

"I would never see [the injection site] as a long-term solution," said Sullivan. "We know there's 90 percent Hep C and 30 percent HIV among injection drug users. The reality is needles are not a good way to take drugs."

Sullivan is proposing five trial programs that will see substitute drugs delivered to about 1,000 addicts within the next 18 months. He's hoping that the federal government will allow the safe-injection site to continue operating until the new treatment program is in place; permits for the Insite program are due to expire in December. "It needs to be there as an essential recruitment site for [the substitution trials.] But I do believe it is a temporary measure," he said.

By emphasizing a change in the injection-drug culture in Vancouver rather than calling on people to stop using drugs, Sullivan believes the program has a greater chance of success.