Enabling drug addicts isn’t helping them

By Lethbridge Herald on July 30, 2022.

Editor:

I don’t understand, and I never will, how there is a portable SCS bud right in the middle of where tent city used to be and yet “do gooders” continue to hand out needles by the handfuls to the occupants. 

The same “do gooders” were behind starting an SCS the first time because it works (in their minds). Now they hand out needles only feet away from the SCS saying “just shoot up in your tent, it’s the best method.” 

Doesn’t that prove they don’t believe in their own “best practice”? 

Lethbridge’s easy stand on the issues is opening the door for more homeless people to come here. Free food from food banks and soup kitchens, free tents, lax enforcement of trespassing laws, we aren’t teaching them to fish, we are making it easier for them to just keep existing as is. 

Drug dealers swooping in to profit from the increased population of users, gangs recruiting with offers of a bed to sleep in, our soft stance has left the door open for the criminal element to thrive. 

You’d have to be naive to not see what’s happening. 

If the number of overdoses increase (in tents and areas around them) then the ultra-lefties can claim the current program doesn’t work. 

Here’s the hypocritical point they are missing: to try and prove their point they are literally using the people they say they care about as guinea pigs. They are now the ones who don’t care if people survive; their point is only reinforced if people overdose and they can blame the current programs. They are quite literally gambling with the lives of addicts to try and prove their political point. 

Follow the money of directors’ pay in the social services sector (think SCS director $250,000+ again), then you’ll know the true motive. 

The current program is lacking in transitional housing, it needs major work … neither the UCP nor the NDP focused on this component when in power. Shame on both of them.

 The current situation of tents is the outcome of failed policies of both parties. Neither one of them has a moral high ground from which to finger point. No more studies, committees, plans, consultations. 

Every 12-step program teaches the difference between helping and enabling, I’d suggest our city council read about it; right now they are enabling and the time for action is long overdue. 

Brent Hansen

Lethbridge