It’s time to stop supporting criminal behaviour
By Lethbridge Herald on July 21, 2022.
Editor:
It is like the Wild West in Lethbridge, constantly having to dodge the drug makers, dealers, distributors and takers.
Your own yard is not safe – fences, gates, security lights et cetera do not stop its use as a transit through the neighbourhood, a bathroom, a smoke stop, a place to sit and converse in the night, a place to dig through garbage and recycling bins.
There is no point in the police picking them up; the justice system just releases them back out the same day or the next. Get serious – this is about criminal activity that kills people and endangers all of us. Everyone who supports any facet of illegal drugs – from making to taking – is involved in criminal behaviour.
We don’t need safe supply, we need no supply. We are rewarding dangerous behaviour with free food, clothing, shelter medical supplies – better treatment than for any low-income seniors or disabled. Those who are smart enough and strong enough to continue to walk the city streets and take advantage of all the freebies are also smart enough and strong enough to take responsibility for their behaviours and to make changes.
The shelter should be a hostel; soup kitchen a low-cost diner; food banks low-cost grocery stores; Alpha House co-ordinating and assisting in job and housing placement: AHS injection site bus a mobile health clinic for all Lethbridge area. The City and the Blackfoot Confederacy know what to do: stop supporting criminals. Reward changed behaviour.
Karen J Collin
Lethbridge
9-8
Thank you Karen . . . it is refreshing to here someone state the truth and I have not seen anyone reflect on so many of the truthful events in just a few paragraphs. Well said, to the point and a true accounting of what happens on our streets.
This is our city and we do have a say! I would suggest that you come to City Hall on Tuesday, 26 July to show the city this is such an important subject.
I am not going to protest Council, because I know most of this Council are doing everything they can do resolve all of the issues on our streets.
The Alpha House shelter is a failure, and only hinders our efforts to take back our city.
Thank you again for the great comments!
Spot on, Karen. Unfortunately, there are too many bleeding hearts in our city who want to coddle these people.
And now there guns and a murder in the encampments, the gun still unaccounted for. Why don’t people get it?
Let’s take our beautiful city back!
I love it! You get it! Foodbanks and other necessary organizations are seeing lower donations and it will only get worse with inflation and a recession on the horizon. Canada’s national debt has doubled in the last 3 years and provincial debts increased, so there will be budgets slashed in many areas and we will see many of the services we have always had reduced or ended. Change is coming and programs will be slashed!
Where do we want our money going? Many of these people can work! They are smart enough to pillage our city nightly, to survive on the street, to set up camps and know how to ‘manipulate’ people well, so they are smart enough to work.
When you see people of all ages that have disablities that visibly impact their lives get up and go to work at many sites in our city, there is no reason, NONE that these people cannot be working! They have ‘manipulated’ us along with the non-profits that make a living off of them and don’t want to see a solution, because then they will be out of job!
There is so much more going on that many are not aware of! The best way to end this is simple: You don’t work, you don’t eat! You stay in the shelter, you help with clean-up and other tasks. No ‘urban camping’ allowed, PERIOD or you will be fined and if you don’t pay, you will go to jail or work it off by working in the community, cleaning, removing graffiti,etc.
We are creating long term lawless, lazy people that will cost us billions in the future in support/welfare/housing, as well as police/EMS/court/jail costs.
Why do we have to bring in all the foreign workers when we have so many that can work?
Exactly right. You can also add in why it is continually incumbent on the working and contributing members of society to support those who have opted for a life of drugs and crime and are unwilling to take the steps to get clean.
Fed up with the scolding and belief that we owe them something for the path they have chosen which has left them “marginalized” and “vulnerable” members of the community. Resources for support to getting on the right track are available. If they choose not to use them, then as tax payers we should have to choice not to fund their criminality through programs and initiatives that do nothing but foster, encourage, and enable their drug life and crimes which are destroying our city and putting others at risk.
They have also hijacked much needed attention and support from our homeless population who have nothing to do with drugs and crime, and who have sadly been lumped in with this disgraceful mess.
the writer makes a good point only with regard to the likes of trespassing and theft, and violence. this all seems to have increased markedly in lethbridge. beyond that, there is a significant lack of understanding expressed in the letter.
using drugs should not be criminal – each must have a right to take what they wish. behaviour that infringes on the rights of another, however, must be addressed. that said, using liquor must not be criminal, but one’s behaviour whilst under the influence must abide by laws that protect the rights of others.
the vast majority of people that use liquor and other intoxicants are able to do so responsibly. the laws that have made criminals out of people exercising their right to their body, such as when liquor and cannabis were deemed illegal, are an infringement on the most fundamental principles of freedom and liberty. moreover, our drug laws, and the ridiculous war on drugs, not only have proved a massive failure, they created far more issues than not, and wasted a heck of a lot public money. as well, those laws lined a lot of pockets, from criminal organisations raking in billions, typically with altered and unsafe products, right through to some of the very people that were paid to enforce those awful “laws”; nothing like an envelope stuffed with cash to provide inside info and/or look the other way.
the war on drugs, and the laws that make drugs illegal are a human rights disaster and amount to crimes against humanity. in addition to making criminals out of people exercising their right to their body, those nasty laws have resulted in far too many poisonings and overdoses. those laws have elevated the cost of all drugs, due to the risk involved…and drugs, folks, are by their very nature very cheap to produce. even coffee, one of the most finicky crops and highly labour intensive, is affordable to most everyone.
the artificial high prices for drugs the war on drugs has created has resulted in addicts, not responsible users, having to resort to criminal behaviour to support an artificially expensive habit; it has also tied up our law enforecement and courts and penal systems, costing us a fortune that need not be spent as such; it has resulted in the rights of people being infringed upon by criminal activity that would otherwise not have taken place. thus, people, the illegal war on drugs is what really has dragged us down, and has created far too many victims.
Sorry Biff, but as someone who has been boots on the ground, dealing with the addicts/homeless for several years, it is you that appear to have it wrong.
The law states that controlled substance use on our streets or anywhere is a criminial code offense, to date. Being intoxicated in a public place is illegal, but not criminal, whether on pot or liquour. I have dealt with many on the streets that are chronic alcoholics that have often threatened my life or to do bodily harm when simply asked to please not drink in that area, while others like the well known ‘Elvis’ are understanding and move along after we have a few laughs!
Many of us knew if pot was legalized, organized crime would focus on other drugs to make money and found the ideal drug, fentanyl which could be transported easier and sold for more profit. If we legalize opioids, they will find another drug for revenue. It is part of their business and like any business person, they will sell what is selling to earn revenue! Twenty years ago, many argued that this would not happen if they legalized pot!
Well, it did and I am afraid what will replace opioids if we legalize it like BC wants! Opioids is what caused the problem andtdo combat heroin overdoses in BC, they opened the first safe injection site in North America in 2003.
Since then the more sites have opened, and the number of fatal overdoses, numbers of addicts, crime, homelessness, and costs have all increased annually.
Addicts have always done anything they can to support their addictions, stealing from family, friends, anyway they can. The issue is that the number of drug addicts have dramatically increased and the types of drugs desensitizes them to feel when they need a fix and would assault their grandmother in a wheelchair to take her last $5.
The war on drugs is hard to win when one of the biggest revenue for CIA black ops has been Cocaine and opioids in the last several decades. Remember Noriega and how about the Iran/Contra affair just a couple of examples! Not conspiracy theories! There are many other well known examples to prove it. Troops were not allowe to burn many of the poppy fields in Afghanistan because they were ‘protected’ by the CIA. One UN report found the CIA had a multi-billion dollar opioid business several years ago, much of which, was from the Afghan poppies. Historically the CIA has always got at least 70% of the operations funding from their covert ops, even owning one of the US major airlines at one point.
We are not talking about a war on drugs, we talking about taking back our streets, parks and neighbourhoods, and stopping the needless deaths of so many young people who are lost and addicted. You cannot do that by supplying all their needs while they slowly kill themselves!
This is our city and we have a say! Keep it simple! Don’t fog the issues.
It was refreshing to hear from someone like Karen who has a very good understanding of what is really going on. Sadly Biff, you do not!
you, and all the usual nothing thoughtful to respond with neg icon poppers have, entirely, evaded or otherwise been unable to respond to my points. we all know there are numerous “drugs” deemed to be illegal under our laws. the basis of my entry is that those laws should be illegal, and it is the effect of those laws that create the brunt of our expensive “drug” related legal and social issues. you ever read this before? you know who john ehrlichman is? richard nixon? they are the authors of the war on drugs, that now for over two generations with a bunch of other puppet countries in tow proved futile and corrupt and uber expensive. all the while numerous cultures and societies the world over have been ravaged by this ridiculous war that is in fact a crimes against humanity and a human rights issue.
see if perhaps you might acknowledge this widely quoted piece, and then, please try and consider again my point.
‘ “You want to know what this was really all about?” Ehrlichman asked, referring to the war on drugs.
“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.”
“Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did,” he concluded, according to Baum. ” ‘
https://www.businessinsider.com/nixon-adviser-ehrlichman-anti-left-anti-black-war-on-drugs-2019-7?op=1
Biff you continually try to ‘fog’ the issues. The ’cause’ of the addition is that basis of the issues of homlessness, encampments, related crimes, human trafficking, etc.
Karen stated her observations in her letter accurately, including the fact that even with CCTV, they just do not care if you are watching them commit crimes. She compressed a lot of accurate points in her letter.
Opioids, starting with heroin, are what started all this a couple of decades ago, not because they were illegal, but because of the drug itself and people wanting to escape from what haunts them!
Fentanyl magnified the issues! COVID restrictions compounded the issues, almost doubling the number of fatal overdoses, not just in Alberta, not just in Canada, but across North America!
Your rant, which was so full of errors was so hard to read, but it appears you believe that legalizing these drugs is the answer, even though opioids are the drugs everyone turned to, so they could ‘trip’ into another ‘space’.
A couple of years ago, the AHS use to release quarterly Coroners reports, which included the drugs found in the people who fatally overdosed and many times they found both legally prescribed opioids to treat the addiction with illegal opioids.
Legalizing these drugs is not the answer!
The most effective plans in the US employ drug courts, charging the addicts and giving them a choice, treatment or jail and the treatment programs are not just 3 months, they are programs that are 12-18 months and in some cases 12-24 months, going from detox, to treatment, to relapse training, to upgrading schooling, to job placements and follow up and have long term success rates over 80%.
They are tough on drugs, not more lenient and use firm policing, focused on getting them off the streets, one way or the other, not allowing them to take over cities.
Enough said on this matter!
My understanding, approximately 12-18 months ago wasn’t there an announcement about creating that very thing. A drug court???
You are correct! A test trial of drug courts began in Edmonton a few years ago and over a year ago Lethbridge opened it’s first drug court, which has already seen successful graduates of the treatment program.
The example I stated is more involved, works with the community and churches, utilizing volunteer probation type officers to keep the costs down, working closely with local business to suppy work spaces.
We have many of the elements in place, but we are not at the point of the model I gave. Still, the drug court/treatment program in edmonton say high success rates of about 78%, I believe.
The difference is the program I stated in the US is tough on drugs and law enforcement is still charging people with possession and doesn’t allow groups running around ‘enabling’ users by supplying all the paraphernalia they need to get high, nor do they have legal consumption sites!
You create more excuses for them than tablets at a Bayer factory! Pooh on you for this biff!