“Do you want to find my daughter beside your car dead in the morning or do you want the hospital to deal with her when she overdoses?”
This was the impassioned plea of a father speaking to Richmond city council Monday night in favour of a safe-consumption site. City council is considering a motion - which they voted 8-1 in favour of last week in a committee meeting - to ask the health authority to consider setting up a safe-consumption site on the Richmond Hospital grounds.
Stephen Mather told city council that a safe-consumption site isn’t the “be-all and end-all,” but it gives people with addictions “a start and a spark of hope.”
“Every one of those people needs a spark of hope,” Mather said.
Speaker after speaker addressed city council on the subject, the vast majority speaking against it and expressing fear of drug use spreading in Richmond as a result, while others spoke of lived experience using safe-consumption sites or of loved ones who were lost to the toxic drug crisis.
Four hours and about 50 speakers in, the meeting was adjourned and the rest of the speakers, about another 50, will be given the chance to express their views on Tuesday evening.
The meeting was preceded by a rally outside city hall where hundreds of people gathered with signs and chanted “no drugs, no drugs.”
Many speakers argued that safe-consumption sites haven’t reduced the number of deaths from overdoses or drug poisonings. They noted Canada’s first safe-consumption site, Insite, in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, opened in 2003, but drug deaths have only risen.
In fact, no one has ever died of a drug overdose or drug poisoning at Insite. The safe-consumption site has had about 400,000 visits since it opened.
The BC Coroner has noted deaths are occurring because of the presence of fentanyl and other substances in street drugs that cause respiratory arrest which, without reversal, can lead to death.
After city council voted 8-1 in a committee meeting last week to support the motion, initiated by Couns. Kash Heed and Laura Gillanders, an online petition garnered close to 20,000 names in opposition.
The only councillor who voted in opposition was Chak Au.
The council meeting will continue on Tuesday, Feb. 13 at 7 p.m.
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