Drug dealers will lose profits of $50 million a year once Mayor Sam Sullivan's drug treatment plan to treat 1,800 addicts is implemented.

That's the prediction Sullivan made at his State of the City address Jan. 24 regarding his proposed Chronic Addiction Substitution Treatment program.

Wondering how he arrived at $50 million? Simple, says the mayor.

Take 500 heroin addicts, who inject heroin four times a day at $9 a dose. That equals $18,000 a day. Then take 1,300 drug addicts who abuse cocaine or crystal methamphetamine 10 times a day at $9 a dose. That equals $117,000 per day.

The total comes to $135,000 per day, or about $49 million per year.

"We passed this around to different people in the policy area, and people have not had any major difficulty with the numbers," Sullivan told the Courier. "In fact, the most common comment is that they're fairly conservative."

The mayor's drug treatment program involves five research trials that target 1,800 drug addicts. The plan is to have medical doctors prescribe legal drugs as substitutes to heroin, cocaine and other illegal drugs. This approach will not only reduce drug dealers' profits, but put a dent in property crime, street prostitution and homelessness, Sullivan says.

The mayor was not clear on whether all the proposals were before Health Canada, the federal government body that will decide whether the trials get the green light.

"As to whether they're all fully completed and in, I haven't got the recent update on that," he said, noting he didn't know when Health Canada will make a decision. "It's very hard for me to say. I don't control any of that."

But the mayor said the program must be adopted soon, particularly before the 2010 Winter Olympics. 2010 is the year the mayor has marked to see homelessness, the open drug market and aggressive panhandling reduced by 50 per cent. Those goals are enshrined in his Project Civil City, which is being administered by civil city commissioner Geoff Plant, the former attorney general of B.C. "We really want to be able to show some very positive, innovative, progressive outcomes by the time the world arrives," he said. "We want to be able to show that Vancouver is leading the world in innovative research in drug addiction."