DRUG TALK CALLED JUNK

EDMONTON --The mayor of Vancouver should stopping using Alberta as a
whipping boy to deflect attention away from the city's drug problems,
Premier Ralph Klein said yesterday.

Mayor Phillip Owen released a discussion paper Tuesday on how Vancouver
should tackle its growing number of intravenous drug users -- including the
possibility of establishing a needle park for junkies.

Owen said he personally opposes the needle park idea because it would be a
magnet for drug addicts from across the country -- especially Albertans.

Magnet For Addicts

"They have a lot of one-way Greyhound bus tickets that the premier of
Alberta would like to hand out to a lot of people in Calgary and Edmonton
and they'd all be here in hordes and I think that's not good for anybody,"
he said.

Klein called Owen's comments ludicrous and said he may phone the mayor to
express his displeasure.

"The assumption is absolutely absurd," he said. "I just can't imagine in my
wildest dreams the establishment of a needle park in Vancouver attracting
junkies from Alberta.

"I think the mayor is experiencing some political problems within his own
council and he wants to use Alberta as a whipping boy."

Bus Tickets To B.C.

Klein admits his government did buy tickets for Alberta social assistance
recipients to travel to B.C. in the early 1990s to help cut the province's
welfare rolls.

The premier also acknowledged that he made similar headlines in the early
1980s when he was mayor of Calgary for telling "eastern creeps and bums" to
leave Alberta during the province's oil boom.

But Klein said there is a distinction.

"I was talking about people coming to this province who were mugging senior
citizens and robbing banks. He is talking about junkies."