Vancouver City Councillor Adriane Carr says meeting members of the Canadian network Moms Stop The Harm changed her life forever.
She says hearing stories from the mothers who lost their children to the toxic drug crisis further opened her eyes to the catastrophic impacts illicit drugs have had on families across the province.
Now Carr is hoping to spark change in Vancouver and beyond through a motion she’s planning to table at a council meeting on Wednesday morning.
“The motion is about actually much more aggressive and synchronized efforts to tackle the toxic drug health emergency that we have in British Columbia,” said Carr, a member of Vancouver’s Green Party.
In the motion, Carr calls for more treatment beds, better prevention programs for youth and an immediate push for supervised indoor inhalation sites.
Data by BC Coroners Service shows a majority of drug users consume substances by inhaling rather than injecting.
Carr’s motion says the province’s Tobacco and Vapour Products Control Act is prohibiting supervised sites from allowing users to smoke their drugs indoors under supervision. One doctor who works in the field tells CTV News an exemption for drug users is long overdue.
“People receive services in the clinic or in the supervised consumption site and then they end up smoking illegal substances in the alley or on the street, which is really not conducive for an optimal outcome,” said Dr. Julio Montaner with the Hope to Health Research and Innovation Centre.
According to B.C.’s Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions, there’s currently one indoor supervised inhalation site open in Victoria, and 16 outdoor supervised sites open throughout the province.
Carr says she’s calling on higher levels of government to fix the glaring issues with its “safer supply” program. CTV News spoke with an outreach worker Vancouver who says drug users often go to the streets everyday, in addition to seeking available safe supply, to get their fix.
“They’ll give you 40 milligrams but that’s not enough to get through the day,” said Kali Sedgemore, who often works in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. “It’s not a strong enough dose.”
Carr’s goal is to get all city’s across the province on board with her motion in order to put more pressure on senior levels of government to help address the issue.
If it passes, it’ll be presented at the Union of British Columbia Municipalities (UBCM) convention in September.
“I think it’s a no brainer to support these measures,” said Carr.
