One Richmond political slate – running three candidates for city council and four for school trustee – doesn’t want safe-injection sites in the city.
Richmond Community Coalition (RCC), whose sitting member of Richmond city council is Chak Au, said they stand in “principled opposition against injection sites.”
Richmond doesn’t have a safe-injection site open to the public where people can test their drugs to see if they’ve been cut with other substances that can cause users to go into respiratory arrest and cause death. Both of the temporary modular housing sites in Richmond have a safe-injection site, but they are only for residents of those buildings.
In a press release, RCC said certain candidates “seem to advocate for Richmond taxpayers’ money to fund injection site facilities,” and questioned whether they had a “hidden agenda” to “impose” safe-injection sites in Richmond “without consultation or accountability to Richmond residents and businesses.”
“The Richmond Community Coalition Association (RCCA) team is in support of mental health resources in Richmond, but is committed to stand with local residents and businesses against injection sites in the community,” the press release stated.
After posting on Twitter about the dangerous drugs in Richmond, Mark Lee, running with the Richmond Citizens’ Association (RCA) slate, told the Richmond News, “we are seeing more preventable deaths by poisoned drugs year over year in Richmond.”
When asked during the mayoral portion of last week’s all-candidates meeting if there should be a safe-injection site in Richmond, Brodie said this is something that should be done if Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) deems it necessary; however, he added, most drug-poisoning deaths in Richmond have happened in private homes.
Later in the all-candidates debate, Lee noted those deaths happen in homes exactly because there is no safe-injection site, which was greeted by applause from the audience.
“The reason people are dying in their homes is because there aren’t overdose prevention sites existing for them to use in the city,” Lee said. “So, how could they possibly be dying anywhere else?”
Brodie announced this week he is endorsing all three RCC candidates, Au, Sheldon Starrett and Rahim Othman, for city council along with five other candidates.
The B.C. government declared a public health emergency more than six years ago over the number of deaths from drug poisonings.
In response to a query from a Richmond resident, VCH said it’s not currently planning to open a safe-injection site in Richmond.
According to the BC Coroner’s Service, 23 Richmond residents died of drug poisonings between January and August of this year, between one and four per month.
Richmond Fire-Rescue statistics for August show that the fire department responded to 45 overdose/poisoning calls in August.
According to Richmond fire chief Jim Wishlove, about 20 of these calls were due to overdoses, but he pointed out not all are necessarily for illicit or street drug overdoses.
Some calls are due to prescription medicine or poisonings from other sources.
Not all drug overdoses require naloxone or “significant" live-saving intervention, Wishlove added.
- with files from Vikki Hui/Richmond News
