By Geoff Smith - Lethbridge News Now

Government outlines drug response, with more to be done

Jun 15, 2018 | 2:53 PM

LETHBRIDGE – The province admitted there’s more work to be done to deal with an unprecedented drug crisis, as it outlined the steps it has taken so far.

At a news conference Friday, June 15, MLA Shannon Phillips noted the government has approved $2.6 million in funding for additional consumption booths and one more inhalation room at the supervised consumption site. ARCHES confirmed it currently has ten booths in service, including four that were installed on an emergency basis in May. Six more are being built over the next few weeks, and the four emergency booths from May could be taken out of service then, or left in place.

Phillips also mentioned the eight detox beds at Chinook Regional Hospital, a $1.9 million project first announced in 2017.

The remaining three points of the plan are $80,000 to expand the needle collection program, funding for education, and to work with the City of Lethbridge on frontline supports.

“We are a city in crisis. Our need in Lethbridge is amongst the highest in the province, and we’re certainly struggling with the issue,” Mayor Chris Spearman said. Spearman is calling not just for detox beds, but an intox program and better housing.

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“We have begun with the eight detox beds that we have here in Lethbridge,” Phillips said. “That is a start. It is not a finish, I think it’s fair to say. We do have a need for more supportive housing and other services, there’s no question about that.”

Spearman said the city will have a housing strategy ready to go when Ottawa announces its plans for a housing strategy in September.

He said he welcomes the expansion of the supervised consumption site.

“We’ve had some tremendous successes, 5,000 uses a month, but we’re hoping with the expansion that that’s going to increase and that we’re going to capture more and more of our drug users and addicts using the SCS. We want to make sure the drug use gets minimized in our community, and we want people to feel safe in our city.”

Speaking on behalf of the Lethbridge Police Service, Insp. Tom Ascroft said that drug use would be happening in the street if not for the facility.

“The numbers are staggering for the uses and the overdoses. If not for the site, those would be occurrences that are happening on the street, in public, they would be things that take our members away from, arguably, more pressing tasks,” he said.

Ascroft said they’ve had to increase the police presence, along with additional security, around the site on the edge of the downtown. But he said it’s taken that activity away from other public areas like parks, libraries, and malls. He also said they’re investigating drug-dealing activity in the neighbourhood, but as far as users, it’s not a problem they can solve by locking everyone up.

“It’s not hard to see how our corrections facilities and our law enforcement resources would be overwhelmed if we were to charge everybody with possession of a narcotic that had it,” he said. “If somebody’s blatantly doing something, certainly if somebody’s trafficking, somebody’s using in public, those kinds of things are dealt with through the criminal justice system. But somebody making their way to the consumption site to consume, that’s what we want them to do.”

“Addictions is a process to heal,” MLA Maria Fitzpatrick said, drawing on her career in corrections. “But that process requires respect, support, a place to live, a place to deal with all the issues when you’re coming off those drugs.”