By Josh Hall (Twitter: @Vancan19)

Moms Stop the Harm applaud Red Deer supervised consumption decision

Nov 30, 2018 | 10:59 PM

A Canada-wide advocacy group is coming out in support of Red Deer city council’s recent decision to approve zoning for supervised consumption services.

Moms Stop the Harm had two representatives, one each from Red Deer and Edmonton, speak at a public hearing on the matter on Nov. 13.

MSTH is a network of Canadian families whose loved ones have died from drug-related harms or struggled with substance use.

Susan Robblee with MSTH in Edmonton says the organization believes strongly that supervised consumption saves lives.

“It’s all good news. The people that are using are going to use the consumption site so they’re not using out on the street, and because of the supervision, they’re under the eye of medical people who expect them to stay until they’re stabilized,” she says.

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“They do medical screening with them to ensure they don’t need follow-up help. What also happens in the Edmonton supervised consumption site is they often discover they haven’t eaten, haven’t got a place to stay and have other medical problems, so there’s an opportunity to connect them with those kinds of services.”

Robblee, who also has a family member that survived the use of fentanyl believes that ultimately there needs to be more supervised consumption available.

“Our motivation for doing this is to stop the senseless loss of lives,” she says. “We can help somebody else by advocating for better harm reduction and services that help them deal with their own grief.”

Asked about the criticism of SCS that it is only enabling people who use drugs, Robblee says it’s important to remember that drugs are not being supplied by the supervised consumption services site.

“It’s harm reduction until the individual is stable enough to access treatment. They will continue to use until they’re ready for treatment, so allowing them to inject or inhale safely or whatever form they using is keeping them alive until they can be helped,” Robblee says.

“I don’t think that’s enabling, but taking way or denying them that opportunity — in some kinds of addictions, you’ve got years before the addiction will be fatal, but you haven’t got that opportunity with fentanyl.”