The Main — June 8: How Can City Hall Stop Overdoses?
Municipalities will have to work with the province on the opioid epidemic.
“Edmonton's worsening opioid crisis prompts renewed calls for action (CBC Edmonton) and “Edmonton’s spike in drug related deaths, overdoses 'unprecedented'” (CTV News) are just a few of the headlines about a massive spike in overdose deaths. More than 55 calls to first responders about opioid overdoses have been made in only the past few days.
This reality struck home for Puneeta McBryan, the executive director of the Downtown Business Association. After three meetings in a row with business owners and social agencies, like Boyle Street Community Services and REACH Edmonton, McBryan took to Twitter with an impassioned plea for people to pay attention to what is happening in the city:
Rage spoke with McByran about the opioid epidemic and the effect that the provincial government’s decisions to shut down supervised consumption sites across the province is having — and what voters can keep in mind about all of this in the October 2021 municipal election.
The following interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
RATM: What was happening when you sent those tweets out?
I had three meetings in a row where various people from the city or Boyle Street Community Services, and REACH Edmonton would give updates on what was happening, so by Thursday afternoon, after what I had been seeing, walking around downtown felt a lot more grim than usual in the past few months. I just reached this critical point where I was just like, what are we doing here, how is it that we have multiple people dropping dead just downtown alone every single day? Or if they don't happen to pass away, they come very, very close, and it's traumatizing to watch that happen, whether they die or not.
I ask myself how is this something that we've just decided is fine. You know when I tweeted it was obviously out of frustration and a feeling helpless. I wanted to draw attention to what's happening.
RATM: How did people react to the tweets?
You know, it was one of those things where, as I was hitting send, I had this moment of like, oh my god, is this a really bad idea? This is a really controversial issue. Do I have a [business association] member who wouldn’t want to draw attention to this issue, and make it worse for downtown by scaring away customers?
I eventually just tried to quiet all those thoughts in my head because that's not what matters. What matters is that maybe someone who needs to listen to this hears it. This is probably the most attention I have ever heard from a tweet. It blew up, so it clearly struck a chord. Clearly, the horror that I was feeling was shared by hundreds or thousands of people. The downtown business community, politicians, of course our front-line social services and health care workers — so many people said thanks for adding your voice to this. I have to say, part of me also felt weird about what I said. Because part of what I said was drawing attention to the broader impacts of what this does to our business community and people who are working downtown. That alone feels crazy because I shouldn't have to talk about the other impacts. People suffering from addiction who are dropping dead — that story alone should be sufficient, but I think part of the reason I really felt like I should say something is because I know that there are people for whom, just the fact that people are dropping dead, doesn't seem to be significant enough.
There's all kinds of stigma around drug users. People across the political spectrum have reached out to me, people who I don't think would typically have been people who would have supported harm reduction or supervised consumption sites, they reached out to me and said well, thanks for saying this. It is really horrifying and I never really thought about it that hard before.
RATM: Your tweets call for a solution. What would you say that solution is?
I struggled a little bit with that because that's obviously the inevitable next question, but I am not an expert. I've been doing what I can to learn. What I do know is that when there were safe consumption services, downtown, we definitely weren't seeing the same amount of overdoses. When the city had the temporary shelters set up at the convention centre, there was a safe consumption site in there.
From what I understand it was very well utilized, and I think the entire time the shelter was operational, there's only one death. Given the amount of drug use that I know happens on a day-to-day basis, that is remarkable. I'm sure they saved hundreds of lives.
Obviously, the drug supply is that much more toxic and poisonous right now. Like something really, really awful is going around. I think with this uptick in death, it isn’t a coincidence that there aren't any safe consumption services, downtown right now other than the George Spady [Society], which is always just so crazy packed, and I constantly see ambulances outside, so they're not able to keep up.
On one hand I say I'm not an expert and I don't know all the answers but on the other hand, I feel like it's pretty that safe to say that [supervised] consumption services work. When those services are there people at least have a chance at getting connected to the resources they need. If this provincial government is committed to addressing the addiction part of the problem and that's what they've been saying, they've invested in significant addiction and recovery facilities, and spaces and services, like, that's great, but as [Don Iveson] said in his statement [if] you can't access recovery facilities, you're dead.
So, I think the fact that this government chose to close, basically, all of our supervised consumption services now in Calgary, tells you that they really don't seem to understand how many lives are at risk, how many lives they could be saving, if they at least left the current services open while they figure out their solutions.
RATM: If you’re running for city council, either for mayor seat or really any part of the city government, what should you do to familiarize yourself with this issue?
Yeah, it's a really, it's a really tough thing, because the issues of addiction, and health care, those issues are in [the] provincial jurisdiction. Very firmly this is a health care issue. This is a social and community services issue. Like we have the Ministry of Health Community and Social Services, and now we have an Associate Minister of Mental Health and Addictions.
Still, I think candidates need to understand these issues and understand what constituents want, and need to see happen. But, and this is where it's really interesting because I think part of our problem right now is that we have a wonderful councillor downtown, Scott McKeen, as well as Mayor Don Iveson, who both really understand these issues and advocate for harm reduction. But their relationship with the province is so unproductive. It feels awful to say but if you're not able to speak the language of this provincial government, and get to solutions in a constructive way, then your understanding won’t matter.
You know, there's really not a lot that on a city council, even if you're in the mayor seat, there's really not that much you can do alone. During COVID and that crisis situation the city put a supervised consumption site in an emergency shelter, but nothing about that situation was technically in municipal jurisdiction. We don’t run shelters at the municipal level.
RATM: What should voters look for from municipal candidates for ending the opioid epidemic?
So, my advice to voters would be to be wary of candidates that are talking like the city can solve these problems or that they in a council seat or in the mayor's seat can solve these problems because really, it needs to be about building strong relationships with the province. It is about reaching compromises or consensus. And I think this council and our current mayor have struggled to do that with this provincial government, not pointing fingers at all, they have different views and different politics, but that relationship building is key. A clean slate with the new council is actually a pretty big chance for us.
I’ll be watching the things municipal candidates say really closely on these issues. There’s two things that are really important to me. One is feeling like they care and they understand and they prioritize dealing with addiction issues. But I am also watching for language that tells me that they know how complicated it's going to be to actually get things done, and that it's not just something that a council can solve alone.
Top Photo: Alberta Legislature, Canva
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