Kenney drug comments slammed by NDP MLA, who lost daughter
The last conversation Debbie Jabbour had with her daughter was about entering a drug treatment program. A few days later, 33-yearold Amaya Benavides overdosed. She died on July 18, 2017.
Jabbour, NDP MLA for Peace River, is going public with her daughter’s story in the hope she can improve conversations around drug treatment.
“For me, it’s the best way I can honour her,” she said in an interview Monday.
Benavides struggled with depression for years.
Her spiral into addiction began through using drugs to self-medicate.
It was a gradual process, but Jabbour said her daughter — a talented singer who loved cats and always helped out those less fortunate — desperately wanted to get clean.
Jabbour was compelled to share her daughter’s death after United Conservative Party Leader Jason Kenney told the Lethbridge Herald last week he was opposed to safe consumption sites, and wouldn’t expand them across the province if elected premier.
He followed up his comments in a Facebook post: “Helping addicts inject poison into their bodies is not a long-term solution to the problem.”
“Enabling someone to commit slow motion suicide — to throw their life away — is not compassion,” he wrote, calling for stricter
He depersonalized anybody with an addiction and labelled them as this horrible person who was bent on doing this awful behaviour.
rules and border controls and cracking down on drug dealers. Those comments hurt Jabbour. Then they made her angry. “He depersonalized anybody with an addiction and labelled them as this horrible person who was bent on doing this awful behaviour,” she said.
Kenney ’s attitude is all-too prevalent, Jabbour said — misunderstanding addiction or, worse, not bothering to try to learn about it.
She is convinced her daughter would have used a safe consumption site, and said Kenney ’s opposition to them makes no sense.
“It saves a lot of money. It reduces crime. There are so many benefits. It’s common sense,” she said.
Kenney was in British Columbia on Monday and not available for an interview. This legislative session, Jabbour will introduce a private member’s bill focusing on access to drug treatment and mental health supports. She is still nailing down the details, but said the system was neglected for so long, it can’t be fixed overnight.
In the meantime, she wants Kenney to understand than everyone with an addiction is a person, a human being, with somebody who loves them. “There’s somebody who wants them to be alive and healthy, and the vast majority also want to be alive and healthy. They don’t want to be addicted.”