EX-POLICE CHIEF APPLAUDS DRUG PROGRAM,
Former Ottawa police chief and current senator Vern White is applauding an opioid replacement program being set up by Ottawa Inner City Health. He has been calling for similar programs across the country.
White planned to contact Wendy Muckle, the executive director of the non-profit health agency that works with Ottawa’s homeless.
“I am going to congratulate her on being willing to take on the bigger discussion around addiction,” White said.
“I guarantee this will make a difference in terms of crime.”
In a letter to White, the head of the Canadian Police Association, Tom Stamatakis, said his organization also supports the “pharmaceutical , medical response” to addiction offered in opioid replacement therapy.
“We believe this medical response will better serve the addict, but as well work toward protecting the community that has been impacted by the criminal activity surrounding illegal and illicit drug trafficking.”
The plan, being rolled out quickly and quietly in response to the worsening fentanyl crisis, was revealed last week. It is expected to begin in September.
It will include a supervised consumption site in which injection drug users will be prescribed Dilaudid, which they will inject or consume on site under supervision.
White, who long criticized supervised injection sites in which drug users bring their own illegal drugs, has been pushing for such sites to offer prescribed opioids as an alternative to street drugs, including morphine, suboxone and Dilaudid or prescription heroin.
He introduced an amendment to the federal government’s bill on supervised injection sites this spring. His amendment, as passed by the Senate, would have forced all supervised injection sites to offer opioid replacement therapies such as prescription heroin or hydromorphone, methadone or suboxone.
By the time it was folded into the law, the amendment made it optional, rather than mandatory, for sites to offer the alternatives, which White said does not go far enough. He said the opioid replacement program coming to Ottawa, only the second of its kind in Canada, should be emulated across the country.
Such programs, including methadone and suboxone clinics, remove the addicts from committing crimes every day in order to pay for drugs, he said. Under the program being set up at the Shepherds of Good Hope and run by Inner City Health, street drug users will be offered Dilaudid, also known as hydromorphone, to be consumed on-site, to stop them from committing crimes or endangering themselves to obtain drugs.
Such programs, which are common in parts of Europe, “remove organized crime from the equation,” noted White.
“When an addict is no longer spending all day trying to get high, they look for things to do, many of which are very positive.”
In some cases, according to Muckle from Inner City Health, addicts opt to move to methadone or suboxone, which are less restrictive opioid replacement therapies. They involve taking an oral dose once a day, rather than multiple daily self-injections of Dilaudid.