Lethbridge City Hall. (Lethbridge News Now)

By David Opinko

City cancels plans for its own addictions study, will use research already being done

Sep 17, 2019 | 6:00 AM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – In a cost-saving move, the City of Lethbridge will no longer be launching its own study into the root causes of addiction.

At the city council meeting on Tuesday, September 3rd, Councillor Jeffrey Coffman proposed spending $74,500 to look into why people become addicted to substances like drugs and alcohol, and why Lethbridge has a higher rate of addiction than other similar communities.

During the council meeting on Monday, September 16th, it was amended to say that a qualified researcher would use existing data and literature to develop a discussion paper on addictions, substance abuse, and Supervised Consumption Site trends locally with an overview of intervention options for the provincial and federal governments.

No more than $40,000 would be spent on doing it this way.

Prior to the amendment being made, City Manager Bramwell Strain was asked to look into what research was already being done on these topics and came back to council to say that there are quite a few groups working on it.

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“There was many different papers out, there was a lot of data available, so rather than re-create the wheel, it’s literally to have somebody who’s qualified to look at that information and coalesce it into one single report.”

Coffman believes that something has to be done about Lethbridge’s drug crisis, but in order to be able to advocate for funding effectively from the provincial or federal governments, they need to be able to identify what is happening and why.

The original study would have consisted entirely of information that is specific to Lethbridge. Under the revised approach, some of the research covers Alberta as a whole, some of it is for the Southern Alberta region, and some is Lethbridge-centric.

“It’ll be able to give us, at least, a partial answer to what we’re looking for,” adds Coffman. “I’m confident, though, the results are going to be able to provide us a good answer going forward.”

Councillor Blaine Hyggen voted against both the original and amended studies.

“I believe a lot of this information is going to be coming out, and so, I just thought for the added cost right now, I didn’t believe it was beneficial as I believe that information is out there are we could get that, but council decided to do this and I will support that.”

The City will have until the end of March 2020 to have this information compiled and presented back to council.