No time to lose fighting addiction crisis

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/12/2023 (650 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Overdoses are an urgent matter. In the throes of a drug-induced medical emergency, minutes can make the difference between life and death.

For the first time since 2016, when the opioid crisis reared its deadly head in Manitoba, overdose prevention is finally being treated with an appropriate sense of urgency.

Rolling out the appropriate harm reduction strategies, however, will take time. And that’s a good thing.

Manitoba’s New Democrats have outlined an ambitious plan to address the root causes of addiction, which includes tackling poverty, expanding mental health services and building more affordable housing.

The provincial government has also committed to responding to the acute outcomes of addiction with more detox beds, a new drug testing program and a first-of-its-kind supervised consumption site.

To have maximum impact, the province needs to strike a delicate balance between effective policy and swift reaction. There’s a lot riding on the NDP’s commitments, both socially and politically.

Creating a supervised consumption site, for example, requires more than just space and supervision.

To function properly — as a place to use drugs without risk of death and as a connection point for medical and social services — the facility needs access to trained personnel and said services upon launch.

That will require building capacity within Manitoba’s already strained health-care system and forging new relationships between government departments and with community organizations. Time-consuming but necessary work.

The location of the province’s first supervised consumption site also needs careful consideration.

Detractors often claim these venues act as magnets for crime, drug trafficking and illicit activity. In Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, where Insite has been operating since 2003, studies have found the opposite to be true.

While the neighbourhood itself has a disproportionately high crime rate due to myriad complex social issues, the country’s first safe injection facility hasn’t contributed to the statistics. Instead, the facility’s presence has increased admission to addiction programs, prevented thousands of potentially deadly overdoses and reduced drug-related litter in the area.

Still, public perception and reality have a tendency to contradict one another.

The NDP has pegged downtown Winnipeg as the home of the province’s forthcoming safe consumption site. It’s unclear where exactly the facility will be built, but the neighbourhood makes sense. It’s central, has a high proportion of vulnerable residents and an existing concentration of social service agencies.

Downtown Winnipeg is also seen locally as the epitome of all the city’s shortcomings, making it the subject of constant calls for revitalization. It’s imperative that a safe consumption site be erected where it will do the most good without hindering the work of neighbourhood developers and business owners. A tricky line to walk.

When it does settle on a location, the provincial government must be prepared to gather and disseminate as much data as possible on the facility’s impact, both good and bad. The province also needs to be prepared to react swiftly to that data in order to maintain public support for the project.

More than 400 Manitobans died of drug overdoses in 2022. While there’s no time to lose, overdose deaths need to be addressed in a sustainable manner that takes into account the complex comorbid factors of poverty, housing and mental illness.

If successful, the NDP’s harm reduction strategy has the potential to improve the circumstances of countless vulnerable residents. The trick will be establishing policies and programs in a timely manner and in a way that matches the high bar the party has set for itself. A challenge indeed.