City councillors show little enthusiasm for safe opioid ingestion site findings

The prospect of Calgary creating a safe ingestion hub for opioid had few supporters among city lawmakers, many of whom insist it be kept out of their wards.

On Wednesday, city police Chief Roger Chaffin said the time has come to offer users of fentanyl and other deadly opioids a supervised environment to consume their drugs and receive help in breaking addictions.

Preliminary discussions are underway to determine what that centre would look like and where it’d be located.

In a survey Thursday of city councillors most, like Joe Magliocca, were already adamant it not be located in their wards, insisting it be situated in the city’s centre.

“Not in Ward 2, maybe in the downtown core,” said Magliocca, who’s also opposed to the notion of supervised drug use.

“I don’t think I support that...I’m for where people can be monitored, get counselling and get them off drugs,” he said.

Magliocca said Calgary should be wary given the experience of a safe injection site in the east end of downtown Vancouver, though most addictions experts have lauded that facility’s benefits.

Ward 4 Coun. Sean Chu said he’s supportive of the notion, as long as there’s also an element of holding drug users accountable — and it’s kept out of his part of Calgary.

“I do agree with the Chief and I also think that people should be more responsible for their own actions and lives,” he said. “I think the site should be where the users most frequent, downtown and centre city.” By contrast, Coun. Richard Pootmans — who won’t be running for re-election this fall — said he agrees with the safe site concept “in principle” and would welcome it in his Ward 6.

Those tracking fentanyl fatalities say they’re occurring in all parts of the city among all socioeconomics groups, though the largest concentration of medical responses have been in the city’s centre.

And they also say Calgary is the hardest-hit part of the province, with 25 of 51 fatalities recorded in the first six weeks of this year occurring in the city.

Mayor Naheed Nenshi has suggested Calgary be host to a Canadian test of “new treatment modalities” that would include safe ingestion sites. Even so, some his council colleagues, like Druh Farrell, are leery. “I would need more details — if it saves lives, I would be open to discussing it,” she said.

Coun. Richard Demong echoed those sentiments, saying it’s too early to endorse it. And Coun. Shane Keating said while he’s skeptical about the supervised ingestion approach, “I think we have to do something about the deadliness of this drug.”

The vast majority of his ward’s residents, he added, would be opposed to living near such a facility. “So the location is crucial,” he said.

Eight of 14 city councillors didn’t respond to questions on the issue.

On Wednesday, Chaffin told reporters “every delay we put to this, someone else is going to die ... I think we know as a community we can do better than this.” He also acknowledged public reluctance in having safe use sites near their homes.

In 2016, the province recorded 349 fentanyl deaths, more than in any previous year, though the pace of fatalities so far this year is nearly double that.