Recovery centre shouldn’t be in the city
By Letter to the Editor on August 18, 2021.
Editor:
Re: foisting a substance use and recovery service onto the citizenry with minimal consultation:
Given the broad issues and social and criminal impacts from the previous supervised consumption site, there are grave concerns throughout the citizenry that council wishes to continue with this bylaw, as is, without fulsome discussion.
A member of city council can move to amend the bylaw to strike 5(i) Substance Use and Recovery Services (provincially and/or federally regulated), defined as:
A development providing provincially and/or federally approved medical services which may include services such as an overdose prevention site, medical detox programs, and withdrawal management facilities. This use is regulated by the provincial and/or federal government.
However, given the observed behaviour of the mayor and several members of city council, they can easily defeat such an amendment, and thereby foist a substance use and recovery services operator onto the citizenry.
Should mayor and council proceed with Bylaw 6276 without striking 5(i), the mayor and council will be seen as sabotaging all the efforts of citizens to have a wide range of social, economic, and criminal concerns addressed so that the city is safe for everyone.
RECOMMENDATIONS:
1) Use Bylaw 6276 to set up a separate facility on this rezoned land for the Alberta Health Service (AHS) mobile health unit to operate from.
This ensures that this service remains as a medical outreach and support service, operated by the province, with the pre-requisite medical staff, oversight, and reporting.
Additionally this option enables AHS to have a building which provides more space, and safer space, for their health services.
2) Enable Alpha House to undertake its renovations to offer more comprehensive 24/7 shelter and stabilization support services. The City should remind the province to provide the funding the Province committed to Alpha House.
3) City to strike section 5(1) from Bylaw 6276. This enables Alpha House and other community support services providers the time to fully build out their services and find effective ways to work together to address the needs of a diverse population of individuals and families.
4) Grass roots community services strategy: At some time in the future the City, community organizations and citizens can undertake a gap analysis to identify any new supports that may be needed to help vulnerable individuals and families have safer, more secure futures.
This strategy ensures that any new supports are well considered with ample time for research and public engagement.
Don’t add to the crime rate on the northside by piling up yet more “services” that draw the kind of people responsible for the crime rate.
A detox recovery center is needed – but out of town – away from citizens and business and away from temptation.
Enough.
Susan Lillemo
Lethbridge
-1
Is this another indication of bandaid solution trying to deal with the problems of an unequal society? Unequal societies will have more troubles with drug addiction, poverty, poverty driven crime…would most folks even realize this?
Other countries/jurisdictions are not perfect, but it might be wise to look to those who. proactively, have lower levels of poverty, poverty-crime, drug addiction, etc., in a broader. bigger-picture sense. It’s known as “nipping things in the bud.” Societies where the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer will have more of these problems.
It is glaring, as to which politics in Canada keep propagating the wealth of the 1% at the top for wealth which is why, I vote accordingly. A good start would be more fair taxation and closing the tax loopholes which only benefit the ultrawealthy.
Poverty as a cause of addiction is patently false. That assertion can be disproven in many ways. Just one of those ways is the fact that most addicts are middle to upper class.
Furthermore, your assertion is meaningless because you didn’t define “poverty”.
Splitting hairs, again? 🙂
Yes, poverty is not necessarily a cause of drug addiction, but the incidence of drug addiction in settings of poverty is too high.
Poverty: the state of being extremely poor..is one definition.
I’m “Splitting hairs” because I asked you to define the main parameter of your assertion? HUH?. What it’s more like, is you can’t define poverty in a way to prove your assertion, so instead, you try to dodge my request.
You said, “but the incidence of drug addiction in settings of poverty is too high”.
Correlation does not imply causation. It’s also why millions and millions have gone through, and continue to go through your yet to be defined “poverty”, and don’t become addicts. It’s also why some siblings in the same “poverty” household can become addicts, but the other siblings do not.
BTW- The definition of poverty you provided is laughable. It’s not even remotely close to a proper definition for a debate.
Thou dost protest too much. 🙂
Absolutely splitting hairs due to imagining himself to be a master debater, skewering everyone on irrelevant points of argument as if superior pettiness somehow wins the day.
Just because addiction is found at all levels of society doesn’t mean it isn’t disproportionately found in certain groups, because it obviously is.
Irrelevant points? Go ahead and name even ONE irrelevant point I made.
Could not be said better….there’s something here, i.e. latent anger /hostility, targeting/picking on certain posters…..and oh, so defensive!
Seth even runs more than one account (‘Mark’), so he can upvote himself. Pathetic.
Considering that the majority of the people in question are Indigenous people, I guess you’ve already completely forgotten the recent, horrific finds at the residential “schools?”
And probably also blithely dismiss the concept of “intergenerational trauma?”
Do you have a reading comprehension problem as well? Try reading my posts again S L O W L Y. If you do, you may notice that little something I mentioned about trauma characteristics and how they are passed down to the kids (poor parenting).
The root of the problem needs to be addressed and it comes down to poor parenting. It’s easy have a kid but to raise it properly – provide for it an environment of love, security and opportunities for success is quite another. Let’s not ignore the fact that most of the drug addicts and homeless infiltrating and aimless wandering our streets were not born here but have migrated in from the nearby reservations where problems are rampant. Unloading ‘their’ problem people onto us is unfair. Blood reservation needs to take ownership and provide parenting skills, addictions counselling and training to give their lost society tangible resources that allow them to get by on their own steam rather than be a burden and problem on our society. Little wonder racism is through the roof.
Poor parenting is indeed the major factor among the type of addicts we’re discussing. More specifically, subjecting children to shame, anger, and worthlessness. These negative characteristics are not only prime catalysts for addiction, but they are also totally avoidable based on the parents.
I think the idea of reconciliation has been internalized since the macabre finding of unmarked graves for MANY little kids. Although they told us before, we just didn’t believe them and needed proof. Now that we have it most of us are finally listening to their stories that defy description they’re so awful, are pure torture really, scarring them for the rest of their lives. You only get one shot at childhood, and it’s the most impressionable time of all, disastrously turned over to devout Catholics, people so arrogantly above nature that they eschew their very own.
And ultimately, apartheid is just inhumane.
I wonder if you understand addiction. Poor parenting has nothing to do with it. It is a disease carried through the genes. You can have the Very best family yet still have a member who has the gene (even from a past generation). Parenting skills of course is still a good idea, but the root of the problem is addiction. It’s also not if they had a job, if they had a house, if they had good parents etc… chances are they had these at one in their life. Addiction is an inside job. Without looking at that, you plain and simply have untreated addiction. Recovery is the only answer. And I’m Not talking about an SCS for it keeps them sicker and takes them much quicker to their death bed.
I guess it could be argued that the alleged “addiction gene” does play a role (if it even exists), but to state that “Poor parenting has nothing to do with addiction”, is non-sensical, or we are miscommunicating the terminology / the types of addicts we’re discussing.
Anger and shame are at the root of the type of addicts that we typically discuss on this forum. Kids aren’t born that way. They have to be taught it by their parents (or lack thereof). This is the fundamental premise in generational trauma. That is, the initial victim passes on the anger and shame to their kids. No matter the cause of the initial trauma, passing it on to your kids is “poor parenting”. So many of these recovered addicts begin their story with something akin to, “I grew up in a household where there was no love and I was treated like sh-t”.
Other than that, I do believe we agree that claiming poverty is a major cause of addiction (as so many people do), is simplistic and narrow. Go on any discussion forum, and there will countless people stating the idiotic notion that, “if you want to stop addiction, you have to stop poverty”.
there are more roads to addictions than there are proverbial roads that lead to rome. said another way, there are a very many, many factors and combinations of factors that lead to addictions of all sorts. as such, there are many areas that people – as caregivers, as free beings (as much of what is left of that, anyway), as citizens, as loving and loved beings – can be better to themselves and with one another. the more we can improve in these capacities, the more we could expect a reduction in the likelihood of dependency on anything that undermines the well being of self and others. until then…it should be rather obvious we are not going to get there en masse any time soon.
with regard to the personal choice of using substances for self medication/pain management (physical/mental/emotional)/recreation…, otherwise known as “drugs”, nothing will change for the better so long as we continue the policies of criminalising drugs. in addition to current drug laws being an affront to the most basic of all inalienable rights – the right to be the sole arbiter of one’s body – criminalisation does as follows: 1) makes nature’s drugs in their natural, unsynthesised and unprocessed states, more scarce. in turn, the drugs available become incredibly more addictive due to synthesising and processing, and expensive due to scarcity and monopoly; as well, they become more dangerous due to the lack of basic safety/quality control; 2) “drugs” become a powerful engine of organised crime, including the organised crime of the state, such as drug enforcement bodies (where have all those squandered trillion$ gone, eh?; 3) perpetuates an unwinnable “wars on drugs” that wastes tons of society’s resources through ineffective policing and judicial and prison policies; 4) synthetic drugs displace nature’s drugs and take over, like weeds, with their ultra high addiction rates and ultra high cost per dose. the consequence to society is that acts of crime emerge so that the addict can afford the ridiculously high price of doses of ridiculously addictive synthetic and processed drugs. it is this which harms society at large: NOT the actual use of drugs.
i have said this many times over: coffee is perhaps the most labour intensive and expensive drug to bring to market, and yet, no one needs to steal for a dose. why? because it is legal. make coffee illegal, and watch crime rates skyrocket in order for addicts to be able to pay black market prices.
legal “drugs” – and NOT the less effective and highly addictive big pharm synthetic poisons! – : 1) would reduce the use of synthetic drugs, which are more harmful, are very expensive, and far more addictive; 2) would ensure safety through quality control, as is already the case with a far more lethal and dangerous substance, alcohol (so, we have an already effective tried and true approach); 3) would reduce the prices of what are natural plants that people have interacted with ever since there have people. these plants provide temporary states of well being, uplifting energy, calm, enhance and promote meditation/reflection, and effectively manage and provide pain relief. 4) would utterly reduce if not completely undermine crime related to use as prices become affordable and addictions fall greatly.
legalising ingestion of plant substances and fungi does not mean you have to use; just as is the case with liquor and coffee and nicotine. it is part and parcel to one’s right to choose – to one’s inalienable right to their body to be the sole arbiter of what one wishes to ingest, or not. legalising is also the only thing that works insofar as crime reduction and addictions prevention. again, examine our approach to liquor since legalisation as compared to prohibition. a tried and true approach; we do not have to reinvent the wheel on this. rest assured, never on planet earth has a society ever been undone by drugs – except where they have been made illegal.
meanwhile, answer this: given that the many decades old illegal war on drugs has not worked anywhere, has always created worse issues, has wasted a lot of money that could have been used for far better community issues (health care, a war on human trafficking…), how, in the light of all of this madness, can any sane mind continue to support such stupid and corrupt notions as criminalisation of drugs and a crimes against humanity war on drugs?
please, offer something that underscores your “neg”. with what that i have written do you disagree? or, are you simply defaulting to the brainwash of the last 80 years?