By Ashley Wiebe

Lethbridge mayor sees positives to supervised consumption

Aug 30, 2018 | 4:48 PM

LETHBRIDGE, AB — Harm reduction and supervised consumption sites are tools many agencies are focusing on to battle the opioid crisis.

The non-judgmental approach is aimed at keeping people who use drugs safe while reducing the number of overdoses and deaths.

Staff at the supervised consumption site in Lethbridge say they’re already celebrating a few small victories, having heard stories about staying sober and even finding work.

But the community response to the facility hasn’t been as bright.

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“On the positive side, people are using the site and the number of clean needles being distributed has been reduced,” said Mayor Chris Spearman.

Thousands of people walk into the ARCHES facility on 1st Avenue South every month.

Many are battling drug addictions and come to the site to use in a safe environment.

It opened at the end of February and has faced harsh criticisms.

Complaints have been pouring in about public drug consumption and issues around public safety.

“It’s around neighbouring businesses and the increased foot traffic, the increased public use of drugs in and around the community, the drug trafficking that some people are calling us on, that they’re witnessing in and around, some increased homelessness,” said deputy chief Scott Woods with the Lethbridge Police Service.

They’re problems which were never the intent of the facility’s purpose.

“What the idea was, was to divert drug usage from the streets, from the community, into a supervised consumption site to save lives and ultimately to have less visible drug use in the community,” Spearman said, adding he believes the concept is working.

“Last year, we were getting complaints from some of our commercial areas, Lethbridge centre, people shooting up in the washrooms,” he said. “If you go to Casa, our community arts centre, people were going into the washrooms there and shooting up in there.”

Back in May, a 12-year-old boy was poked with a used needle outside of a preschool in Lethbridge. He now has to go for blood work every few weeks to test for HIV.

Spearman said despite this incident, he believes fewer needles are being found in the community, but does know that when a resident finds one in the community and posts about it on social media, the community erupts.

He said council understands the concerns and have been working hard to find a solution.

“We did put additional resources into community safety,” he said. “We trained our parks workers, we trained our school custodians. We expanded our clean sweep team and the areas that they cover.”

Still, public safety remains a top priority for the police service.

“We come back to some of the concerns we’re getting in the communities as public drug use that continues outside the safe consumption site, public drug deals going down, exchange of drugs, etc., that people are seeing,” Woods said.

Spearman and his council are now turning their attention to focus on how they’ll move forward.

“If the system is working, then what you’d be doing is actually trying to provide skills to these people so they might integrate better into the community,” he said.

He has also been advocating and working with the province for other supports, like building a detox centre.

“We can’t prevent and manage individual users but you have to say ‘are we heading in the right direction’, ‘is the trend the right one’ and I believe it is,” he said.