Rampant drug deaths in British Columbia have pushed public health officials into uncharted territory many times. It became the first province to decriminalize small amounts of hard drugs for personal use in 2022, about two decades after Vancouver opened North America’s first supervised injection site. But as overdoses rise in some British Columbia cities, there is disagreement in one city about how to deal with it.
In Richmond, one of British Columbia’s largest cities of 230,000 people, councilors became raucous this week as a full public gallery of residents opposed a plan for staff to study whether a safe drinking space for drug users would be viable in community. The plan was approved Tuesday, but the effort is off to a rough start, with few officials and agencies stepping up to defend it.
More than 100 residents signed up to speak at the meeting, some in tears, others amid shouts. The town’s mayor of 22 years, Malcolm Brodie, vied with residents for control of the chamber, and tensions escalated into screaming matches in the hallway, where Mounties intervened.
[Read: Canada Decriminalizes Opioids and Other Drugs in British Columbia]
Residents expressed fears that the facility would disrupt the community and cause drug-related crime and unrest.
“We don’t feel safe and I don’t want Richmond to turn into another Hastings or Chinatown,” resident Swimmy She told Council, referring to two Vancouver neighborhoods hit hard by the opioid crisis, where open drug use is rampant .
The divisions over the plan “concern me a lot,” said Kash Heed, one of the councilors who submitted the proposal. He added that politics and community discord “have created such a bad situation now, in terms of what we want to do for our most vulnerable population who are dying in tents or staying at home and dying alone, because of the stigma attached to acid.” their drug addiction”.
Last year, 26 people died from drug use in Richmond. In the province, there were a record 2,511 deaths and paramedics responded to more than 42,000 emergency calls for medication, a 25% increase on the previous year. Most of the deaths occurred in Vancouver.
[Read: Fentanyl From the Government? A Vancouver Experiment Aims to Stop Overdoses.]
The Council’s proposal argues that the safe drinking place could benefit the city by reducing drug-related crime and improving addiction treatment.
But false information, including the claim that the site would provide drugs, has been spread on social media groups, Mr. Hind, a former provincial security minister and police officer, told me.
Cities do not have the authority to create safe drinking locations. which falls in the province. The plan approved by Council on Tuesday is to study the creation of a safe drinking area on the hospital grounds and begin seeking approval from provincial authorities.
Earlier in the week, provincial health minister Adrian Dix threw his support behind the plan, citing the facilities’ “remarkable” safety record and evidence that they save lives. But outside of Council, there is little support for a new safe-drinking site in Richmond.
Vancouver Coastal Health, a regional health authority serving Richmond, said in statements to local news outlets that a stand-alone safe injection site would not be the “most appropriate service” because it works best in places with high concentrations of drug users.
Premier David Eby, of the New Democratic Party, and some members of the Legislative Assembly representing Richmond did not offer support for the council’s plan when asked about it at a news conference. Instead, he cited Vancouver Coastal Health’s position.
The provincial government introduced legislation to ban the public use of drugs in a sweeping list of places, including parks, beaches, playgrounds and places near workplaces. Under the legislation, which was due to take effect on January 1, officers would direct users to other areas. But a judge in the province’s Supreme Court issued a temporary injunction against the ban until March, ruling it threatened to cause “irreparable harm” to drug users by pushing them into less safe areas to do drugs. The province appealed the decision.
Safe eating websites have recently faced public complaints and lawsuits filed by community members. Last summer, Vancouver shut down one such site after two years of operation. This week, members of a Toronto neighborhood asked the courts to approve a class-action lawsuit against a safe-drinking site where a mother was killed by a stray bullet seven months ago. Among those arrested was a community health worker at the institution.
More powerful drugs are exacerbating the overdose crisis for frontline workers. Last week, the mayor of Belleville, in eastern Ontario, declared a state of emergency after 23 overdose deaths in two days, caused in part by the presence of the animal tranquilizer xylazine in the drug supply. Speaking at a press conference, he called on the provincial government to commit funds to support detoxification facilities.
“The scale of these issues and the pressure being felt by the emergency services has reached a tipping point,” he said.
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Last year, 70 percent of illegal crossings from Canada were at the border with New York, Vermont and New Hampshire, known as the Swanton Sector. Immigrants are increasingly looking north for pathways to enter the United States.
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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his counterparts in Australia and New Zealand issued a statement on Thursday calling for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” in Gaza as Israel plans a ground offensive in the south.
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Karen Kicak, a Toronto-based television writer and producer behind the sitcom “Workin’ Moms,” writes about why her first cigarette was her last.
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“My husband loves the new soap bars, so when I need to replace mine, I take mine and give him the new one,” writes Shannon Moise, a Times reader in British Columbia. It’s one of 100 small acts of love collected by the So section.
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A Canadian ship that sank in Lake Superior in 1940 has been found, but investigators are still puzzled by the strange behavior of its captain. And in Prince Edward Island, researchers are investigating the origins of human remains found on a craggy coast that was dangerous for ships in the 1800s.
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Scientists monitored the diets of 20 polar bears in Manitoba by wearing collars embedded with cameras to understand how climate change might affect the bears’ survival.
Vjosa Isai is a journalist and researcher for The New York Times in Toronto.
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