Kenney opposes consumption sites
United Conservative Party leader Jason Kenney said he would be opposed to expanding Safe Consumption Sites across the province if elected premier.
“Helping addicts inject poison into their bodies is not a solution to the problem of addiction,” he said bluntly while visiting Lethbridge on Wednesday.
Disagreeing with local Lethbridge government, aid organizations and law enforcement officers who have championed the site, Kenney went on to state he did not feel safe consumption or injection sites work, as evidenced by the spike in opioid overdose deaths in Vancouver despite having a safe injection site in that city for over a decade.
“The 50-plus overdoses (in Lethbridge) in the last couple of days is obviously because a particularly rancid and toxic shipment of synthetic drugs has been brought into the region,” Kenney said.
“The real question isn’t how can we help people poison themselves? The real question is: How the hell are these synthetic, foreign-produced drugs hitting the street in Alberta? Why aren’t we massively increasing funding for the Canada’s Border Service Agency to interdict the importation of deadly drugs from China and elsewhere? And why aren’t we giving the police adequate resources to chase down every source in the criminal world to find out who is dealing poison on the streets of Lethbridge right now?
“I think the focus should be on interdiction and law enforcement to keep this stuff off the streets.”