Drug site controversy show gap between harm reduction and treatment

Article content

Even before it opened in October 2017, the supervised drug site at the Sheldon Chumir health centre was dogged by controversy.

Article content

Its opponents’ worst fears came true when the facility became a magnet for open drug use and general disorder in the surrounding area.

And while Safeworks has been successful in its primary mission of preventing overdose deaths, some of the problems remain, with the whole idea of supervised drug sites and harm reduction taking a beating in the meantime.

The UCP government announced the site’s closure years ago, although this has yet to happen. Meanwhile, Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek has joined the ranks of those who believe Safeworks isn’t working.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way — and as it is with so many problems, politics is the main culprit in dooming our collective efforts to address our opioid-driven drug crisis.

Article content

Article content

Centralizing all drug services in one site was the initial mistake.

For one, overdoses can and will happen anywhere. Having one fixed site only goes part of the way to trying to address this problem. It also had the unintended effect of concentrating some of the clientele by drawing them — along with their issues and needs — to one neighbourhood.

The lack of alternative sites means those who are unable to get to the Chumir have in the past chosen to use in other high-traffic public settings instead, causing distress to the general public.

Due to previous shortcomings, politics will come into play for the future: the bad experiences surrounding the Chumir will undoubtedly make it difficult to persuade any neighbourhood to accept a new supervised drug site moving into the area, should the government ever want to do such a thing.

Article content

Not that it was easy before: Some years ago, I bemoaned the uproar over a modest Calgary methadone treatment clinic that was so quiet and unassuming, it hadn’t been noticed until it tried to get a little bigger. The necessary public hearings made its neighbours aware of the facility, causing a backlash and forcing it to move to an industrial park — hardly the correct environment for people who were making an honest effort to get their lives back together and integrate into the community.

Supervised drug sites have operated successfully in some settings overseas, and I wonder if there’s a question of North American sites borrowing some — but not all — of their associated best practices.

Look at Denmark, for instance. Hard drugs are theoretically illegal there but by all accounts, there is some wiggle room when it comes to harm reduction and drug treatment.

Article content

Most importantly, drug sites can be paired with shelters and other social services, allowing a whole host of issues to be addressed at once. But here, shelters for acute homelessness don’t usually have full-fledged drug sites or treatment facilities — and active harm reduction may even contravene some shelter policies

Then there’s the larger problem of political ideologies getting in the way of providing health care for drug users.

On the one hand, you have those who don’t believe in supplying people with illegal drugs to keep them alive long enough to receive treatment. The whole idea of a supervised drug site just doesn’t fit in that view, even though supervised drug sites could and should be the first point of contact for eventual further care.

Article content

On the other hand, you have those who believe in supervised drug sites but seem averse to encouraging drug treatment. Yes, these sites exist to stop overdose deaths, but it seems odd we wouldn’t take the opportunity to actively prevent folks from using over and over again, thereby prolonging their addiction.

That is a very wide gulf we have to bridge but it is a gap we must close, lest our future efforts to curtail drug addiction suffer.

With seven years of officially sanctioned harm reduction in the rear-view mirror, we’ve had enough time to give our previous decisions a proper appraisal.

And while we can’t undo our previous mistakes, there’s no excuse for us to make the wrong choices going forward.

Article content