A Red Deer business man wants city council to take the lead on determining whether a supervised drug consumption site is needed.
“That decision should be made by the city and not by the province, and it should be done by the city after input from the residents — full input and consultations with the residents,” said Jason Stephan, who recently made the recommendations in letters to local MLAs Barb Miller and Kim Schreiner, and Premier Rachel Notley.
“This is a really an important issue to our city so why not let the people we elected to serve our city really be part of this decision. When we allow our local elected representatives to be part of the decision more, I think better decisions will generally be made.”
Red Deer Coalition on the Opioid Crisis has already completed a needs assessment and found the city does need a consumption site. As part of the assessment nine community events were held to gather input.
“I’m not sure how many residents of Red Deer in the summer were aware of this being proposed,” Stephan said.
He said as a downtown business owner he has concerns about the impact.
“I see growing crime and vandalism in the downtown. A lot of downtown business owners have similar concerns. I’m not sure if this is really helping with the problem, or is actually going to exacerbate the problem.”
Stephan said he’s not an expert on consumption sites, but questions enabling those who are addicted.
“We have limited resources to do these things and helping someone to become self-reliant and free themselves of their addiction seems to be a much better use of taxpayer dollars than using scarce money to enable people to remain with their addictions,” said Stephan who is president of the Red Deer Taxpayers’ Association.
He said likely many people feel the same way.
Stacey Carmichael, Turning Point executive director, said there is a commitment to the public and city council to have more discussion about supervised consumption services.
“We’re going to work with the city and the Red Deer Coalition on the Opioid Crisis and figure out what that looks like, but it’s going to happen relatively quickly,” Carmichael said.
She said city does not fund health care nor make health care decisions, but it does have the final say in where a consumption site could be located.
“Addictions are not a choice. It’s a health issue.”
Two of the nine meetings held in August were cancelled due to lack of interest. Attendance was intentionally kept at about 20 people per meeting, she said.
“We want to have meaningful dialogue and that’s what those sessions provided. When you get 200 people in a room and they’re all scared and nobody’s hearing what anybody else is saying, it just creates a terrible environment. It’s not effective at all, so that’s what we were trying to avoid.”
Carmichael will be at the Nov. 14 city council meeting to discuss research on consumption services.
“Research shows supervised consumption services save lives, reduce crime, save tax dollars, connect individuals to treatment. It’s building on what we’re already doing in our community. Filling in the gaps.”
Turning Point, a coalition member, has always encouraged people and groups to contact them for more information, or request a presentation, she said.
“I can’t stress enough how much we’d like to talk to folks about it.”
szielinski@reddeeradvocate.com
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