Counter questions regarding SCS issue
By Letter to the Editor on February 25, 2020.
This is a response to the letter “Some facts, questions about the SCS,” Feb. 14 Herald.
Let’s deal with business expansion: Did you find how many were going to “expand” downtown because that’s the businesses that are being destroyed by this stupidity?
Let’s deal with the 440 unique clients: First, they are not clients, they are drug addicts. The reason Bourque and the SCS staff call them clients is, like any client, they pay their paycheque and are the source of all the money that SCS earns for providing services; that is what a “client” is. Second, you suggest 440 unique clients, yet Lethbridge, according to Bourque/Manning and Mayor Spearman, had 1,300 addicts as of October 2019 (Spearman quote). So if we have 1,300 addicts and 440 (650 visits, some visit more than once a day) are using the SCS, how many of those visits are addicts visiting the SCS for one reason and one reason only, and that is to pick up a fresh supply of needles for the 900 or so not using the SCS?
You ask what would happen to the 440 if the SCS shut down? Simple answer, really; they would use where the other 900 are using, which is in Lethbridge’s 90 drug houses (another Spearman quote). So the impact on Lethbridge would be there would be four more people visiting each of the 90 drug houses that were set up by this stupidity.
Lastly, once the drug clubhouse is shut down Lethbridge will demand someone in the judicial system take this more seriously than they are; catch and release does not work! Lethbridge will also demand the mayor not appoint a soft-on-crime police chief.
Dennis Bremner
Lethbridge
9-8
https://www.cbc.ca/news2/interactives/portugal-heroin-decriminalization/
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/09/07/645609248/whats-the-evidence-that-supervised-drug-injection-sites-save-lives?%20https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(10)62353-7/abstract?code=lancet-site
again, i will state that drugs need to be available as per alcohol. drugs such as coca and opium should be made available to addicts as cheaply as possible – even free. canada should produce as much product as necessary, and set up inexpensive legal import of product where needed. the cost to the public purse would be a fraction of the present costs associated with illegal and unjust drug laws, which amount to crimes against humanity and enter into a sphere where no public body has a right to dictate to a person what they can and cannot do to/with their body.
search hard for your heart, and then go with it – it is only there that exists the pure truth, untouched by social conditioning.
I am critical of things that do not work. What does not work is an SCS, the only people that absolutely INSIST SCSs work are those that benefit financially from it. There is more than ample proof out there that after XX years of operation longtime SCSs provide a place to shoot up and collect government funding.
Every SCS that setup in isolation “savin lives” and then justified its existence as the first pillar of “four” then waited and waited and waited for 2,3,4 and during that time created crime numbers envied by no one.
So if someone wants to pull a Portugal, go ahead, good luck with that, much like 2,3,4 you will wait and wait and wait and like 2,3,4 you will wait and watch your city destroyed. So pick your poison!
certainly not saying our scs is optimum. nor should lethbridge be shouldering far more than its fair share. nor should the scs be positioned where it is…building a quonset type structure and putting it up the tracks behind the shelter would be an improvement.
what i am saying is we strive to deal with our societal issues humanely. the law and order hard core that demand nasty consequences be heaped upon those already suffering with their lives are way off base.
Another great letter Dennis! The articles that state how SCS save lives fail to show the suicides caused by addicts in hopelessness, the deaths from addiction related diseases, the deaths from homeless related diseases, the spread of disease to the community from the addicts that has HIV/AIDS/Hepititis and defintely fail and ignore the successful treatment programs in the US that have NO SCS sites, none and are saving more lives than those that have, and less impact on communities . . . they all fail to see that!
You and I know Dennis the best example of how these sites are an endless money pit and are failing, just by looking directly next door to BC.
They were the first in 2003 and had all the social services in place when the big opioid crisis hit all of North America, yet the number of fatal overoses contiinue to rise, the number of addicts, the number of homeless, crime and above all costs!! So if this works sooooo well, why are more people dying every year since 2003 . . . how is that saving lives???
Open up you wallets and watch all of your own services disappear to pay for all the social and housing costs that are coming from increased addicts. Effective treatment works and reduces the number of addicts and doesn’t kill off half their bodies or brains like enabling addicts does!
SCS’s are inhumane, spiritually and morally wrong and have took healthcare back to medieval ages . . . I can’t believe people think that pumping a bunch of drugs into someone long term helps!
It weakens a country, tearing it apart, beginning in the homes and that is just what countries such as China want . . . a weak, addicted country to take over! Maybe that is what biff wants . . . then again biff wants a new performing arts center right now, when we are in the middle of a financial mess that well see even more cutbacks . . . we are in trouble . . treatin addicts effectively with the right programs cost society a fraction . . . once you get addicts and dealers go in and out of jail the costs get into the area of $5 million per person to the taxpayers . . . the revolving door of addiction and recidivism!!!
How big is your wallet biff . . . I do not want my grandkids paying for this mess we created by opening SCS’s . . . not when there are effective treatment programs that have won awards and work and save more lives than these inhumane sites! What is next . . . bleeding people to get rid of illnesses and evil spirits . . .wake up people!!!
you keep disconnecting the issues biff. We are finding from day to day that the Indigenous Groups are deciding they are a Nation. So, I want the Nations to take back their Drug Addicts, addicts that they purposely kicked off their reserves. I want them to treat their addicts with the supposed level of care and understanding that they insist can only come from them. I note on several occassions, the “Noble tribes” of the First Nations, are selective on how and what they want to be “Noble about”.
Bourgue should not be running this show, Elders should be. I really do not give a damn what Bourgue says about indigenous vs White users because she won’t answer a straight question because she does not want to lose the cash cow.
So until Lethbridge calls a spade a spade we get into these circular arguments of how WE have to be more humane. Does WE include Indigenous Nations or does WE only include the Whiteman?
So I will not participate in circular arguments until people stop BSing Lethbridge. If its an Indigenous problem, identify it as such and set up facilities on the Reserves. If its not Indigenous then lets go from there. But every time I get into this discussion and I ask the question “is this an Indigenous Problem”, people respond with;
-were savin lives
-cast their eyes to the floor and won’t answer
-call me a racist for asking the question
-insist they are professionals and know whats best
NONE will answer the QUESTION…why? Socially unacceptable, politically incorrect, and do you know what that leads too? A society led by a guy with coloured socks that has no clue how to run a country and needs to cater to the crisis creating X Milennial!