OTTAWA - Cheryl Peever was battling cocaine addiction and depression when, on the verge of suicide, she went to her family doctor for help.
"She didn't know what to do," Peever recalled in an interview from Toronto where she now works for the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.
On the cocaine use, Peever said the well meaning but out-of-depth doctor advised: "Well, just stop." It took more than six months of phone calls to navigate an addiction treatment system that's still baffling for many family physicians, Peever said. She finally got help through Cocaine Anonymous.
That was almost 16 years ago, and Canada still has no national treatment system to set standards, guide front-line doctors or rank funding priorities.
Addiction experts have launched a cross-Canada bid to change that. They will gather specialists, policy wonks and lawmakers to draft a treatment model by March 2008 that they hope governments will fund.
"Most people with a substance use problem don't get help," said Dr. Patrick Smith, head of addiction psychiatry at the University of British Columbia and a key organizer of the national strategy effort.
Many provinces want to invest more in this area but need expert advice on how best to do it, he said.
The stakes are huge.
A study released last year by the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse tallied the public cost of alcohol, tobacco and illicit drug use at almost $40 billion a year. The whopping price tag includes missed work, disability and treatment costs.
Conservatives promised during the last election to legally crack down on traffickers and introduce a national drug strategy. But there was little mention of prevention, harm reduction or treatment efforts.
A spokesman for Health Minister Tony Clement said Tuesday that work on the new strategy is well underway.
It "will put greater emphasis on programs that reduce abuse of illegal drugs and help Canadians live healthier and safer lives," said Erik Waddell.
Addiction specialists will be watching closely to see whether the Tory get-tough approach on drugs will be balanced with efforts to reduce demand. Critics have blasted Ottawa's past efforts to wage war on drugs for being too heavy on law enforcement and too light on prevention and treatment.
A report published last week in the HIV/AIDS Policy and Law Review underscored that point. It used Access to Information and government website data to assess how Ottawa doles out $245 million a year to combat drug use.
The study found that the lion's share of the cash, 73 per cent, went to policing, with just 14 per cent spent on treatment, seven per cent on research and three per cent each for harm reduction, such as clean needle exchanges, and prevention.
Rather than curbing drug use, such crackdown-based approaches "often exacerbate, rather than reduce, drug-related harm," the study concluded.
Gail Czukar of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health says addiction is everywhere but still sometimes hidden.
"I think every one of us has someone in our family, close to us, friends, people we work with, who have substance use issues. It's still something that many people don't want to talk about.
"It doesn't have the acceptability it needs to have in order for people to overcome their substance use problems and have more positive lives."
Peever experienced that stigma when she reached out for help. She hopes a national strategy that focuses not just on reduction -- but also on prevention and treatment -- will guide others.
"I get so many calls from parents, relatives or friends who say, 'I've got this person I'm worried about and I don't know what to do about it. Where do I start?'
"Even for someone who knows the system, sometimes it's hard."
