By Taylor Chartrand

Local woman starts petition to advocate for the proposed supervised consumption site

Jun 1, 2019 | 5:50 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – Yesterday, Premier Jason Kenney announced the government’s plan to put a hold on new supervised consumption site (SCS) locations in the province.

Now, one local mother has started a petition to try and reverse Mr. Kenney’s decision.

“We’re hoping the petition will raise awareness with the community,” explained Kym Porter. “But, more importantly than that, we would hope that it would halt Mr. Kenney’s decision and that he would reverse the decision and put that funding back in place.”

The announcement comes nearly a month after Cypress-Medicine Hat MLA Drew Barnes wrote a letter to Health Minister Tyler Shandro, asking the province to cease development of the proposed SCS in Medicine Hat and reallocate the funds elsewhere.

“I sub-sequentially wrote a letter to the Minister myself and eventually we started a letter-writing campaign. I’ve also written numerous letters to different MLA’s, in particular, Drew Barnes.”

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31 letters to Mr. Barnes to be exact.

“To honor thirty-one-overdose deaths in this community, I sent him thirty-one evidence-based articles on harm reduction and on the value of a SCS. To this day, I have heard nothing back from Mr. Barnes and I’m very, very upset.”

Porter lost her son Neil three-years-ago due to an overdose and says a SCS would save lives.

“He would’ve benefited from a SCS. My hope is to be his voice. The anguish and despair I carry daily since his death is something that I would hope other families in this community don’t have to deal with.”

If the SCS isn’t built, Porter fears for the future of Medicine Hat.

“I’d like to see the funding put back in place, so our community, Red Deer and the mobile-site in Calgary can continue. We need to get this site up and running. Any delay equals more deaths and we need to do something and we need to do something now.”

Porter says she is hoping to get as many people to sign the petition as possible.

The document can be found here.