City Council approves new Syringe Management Agreement with ARCHES

Some of the services as part of the new agreement include:

– Needle collection boxes

– Needle pickup hotline

– Walking outreach collection program

– Peer collection program

– Sharps containers

– Community education program

– Exploring additional strategies

It wasn’t a cut and dry decision, however, with councillors Blaine Hyggen and Joe Mauro opposing the agreement.

During the debate, Hyggen cited complaints he’s heard from constituents who said their calls to ARCHES never resulted in debris being picked up.

Mauro’s complaint centred around whether the city should be the one to facilitate the additional increase, instead of the federal or provincial governments.

Community Social Development Manager Martin Thomsen, in response, said he’d contacted Alberta Health Services and other ministries but was told they haven’t funded needle collection anywhere else in the province.

“Most recently the City of Red Deer made an application to the province, but they were turned down. I hear you on this, but I truly don’t have an answer as to why the federal or provincial governments don’t want to fund this,” Thomsen told the councillors.

Councillor Ryan Parker was one firmly supporting the proposal and explained why.

“If we can do something to make our community a little safer, we have to do it. Lethbridge isn’t an anomaly, this is an issue facing small towns, hamlets, as well as big cities. At the end of the day, even if it’s the local tax base that’s paying for this, the place is getting cleaned up and that’s the most important thing,” Parker said.

Mayor Chris Spearman says that drug use and needle debris in the community have been some of the most prevalent issues in the community for the past few years, so it was important to act.

“Lethbridge has one of the highest per capita drug use if we chose just to not clean up the needle debris our city would be poorer for it. It would be a less safe city, it would not be a family-friendly city, and I think it’s important that we allocate dollars where we have problems,” Spearman said, adding he hopes the Safe Consumption Site will help cut down on the amount of debris in the community as well.

ARCHES Executive Director Stacey Bourque says needle debris is an unintended consequence of harm reduction supply distribution and believes it has to be addressed.

“It not only affects the drug using population, but it also affects the greater community. As you heard council state, not all communities have a strategy to address this, and instead, end up with a blanket of needle debris that causes a risk to a greater number of community members. I think it’s fantastic that our council recognizes that and are willing to fund it,” Bourque said.

Bourque says in the grand scheme of things, the cost on average to support harm reduction is less than the cost would be for people to use the health care system and access emergency services like EMS, fire, and police.

She also believes that the increase in funding will allow them to make inroads in cleaning up more debris and having fewer needles in the community.

“I think with the increased number of peers, and the fact that we can have someone dedicated to our hotline for many more hours a week will definitely make an impact,” she continued. “I also think with the opening of the supervised consumption site that we should inherently just see less debris in the street and the community because there are fewer needles going out of the building.”

They know there are a lot of people using the supervised consumption site since its opening as well.

“As of yesterday, we’ve had 2,500 visits for 250 unique people accessing the facility and that’s in just four weeks. I think we’re seeing a huge number of people who are recognizing that this is a better option for them. That’s 2,500 uses that didn’t happen in the community, and 2,500 needles that didn’t land on our street,” Bourque stated.

And as for the alternative?

“The cost of doing nothing is extreme, and we’ve watched that before. We watched it through the HIV epidemic, we watched that years prior when we had needle distribution issues where no one was there to clean them up. The Portland Hotel Society in Vancouver employs approximately 600 peers to do this work. This isn’t new, we haven’t recreated the wheel.”

by Aaron Mahoney (@Mahones93 on Twitter)

City Council approves new Syringe Management Agreement with ARCHES

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