It’s time we turn off the tap

Dear Editor:

Decriminalized public drug use has sick taxpayers wading through the addicted to get into the hospital.

Inside the hospital staff, kids and their parents and seniors wait and deal with the addicted demanding help, often in the form of altercations to get more drugs. Medical staff is pulled off other floors to cope with emergency room chaos which leaves those floors under staffed.

Now Health Minister Adrian Dix is going to create a task force to help addicts manage addiction, in designated spaces with care teams, while in hospital. Those designated spaces will fill up faster than you can dial a dealer.

There seems no end to the money spent on clean0up, staff, free needles, free housing, free food, free run of every street in every town. None of these efforts are quantified.

Our health care budget is taking another hit, more staff is being diverted and every business and home is paying for the damages and losses with no improvement on our streets.

Meanwhile: Oliver Hospital and other regional hospitals are closed on a regular basis because of no staff or no money.

Meanwhile: Houses are turned into hospitals. People barely able to walk are sent home to free up beds. “Cured” dementia patients are sent home in a taxi, to a frail spouse as their caregiver, with a home care program that is broken and failing due to not enough staff. Doctors or nurse practitioners have no incentive to do rounds in senior care facilities that don’t have enough beds or staff... no money for any of them.

Meanwhile: Our paramedics, firefighters, nurses and doctors face PTSD after years of dealing with a stream of overdoses. That tap is never going to be shut off unless we implement large rehabilitation facilities and stop being enablers.

All of our politicians have the power and resources to end this mess and they are failing.

Lynn Crassweller Penticton