Squamish will soon have its own overdose prevention site to address the overdose crisis that continues to wreak havoc on families across the province.
On Tuesday, council unanimously voted in favour of leasing the former Helping Hands facility at 37930 Third Avenue to create an overdose prevention site. It’s expected to remain until April 2022.
Officials intend for it to operate from late afternoon to evening.
Vancouver Coastal Health and Helping Hands will be partnering to create the site. VCH will provide funding, education, clinical support and harm reduction supplies, while Helping Hands will manage day-to-day operations.
“Bottom line is to keep people safe, minimize death and disease and injuries from high-risk behaviour,” said Maureen Mackell, executive director of Helping Hands.
She said the site will also have an outside smoking consumption area for drugs that are inhaled.
The building’s proximity to the new Helping Hands building Under One Roof, will make it easy for Helping Hands staff to manage, she noted.
Overdose prevention sites, like safe-injection sites, offer people a safe, supervised place to use drugs, but the legalities of each are different.
Overdose prevention sites (OPS) have been temporarily created under a provincial public health order.
These OPS sites are being set up in response to the overdose crisis being declared a public health emergency by the province in 2016.
Safe injection — or supervised consumption — sites, on the other hand, are permanent institutions that operate under an exemption to federal drug laws.
The creation of a safe injection site requires community consultation, but overdose prevention sites do not.
However, Chris Van Veen, VCH regional director of prevention, said that every time a prevention site has been put in a small community, authorities have consulted with residents.
Van Veen said that in VCH’s coastal-rural areas, which is the zone that applies to Squamish, there have been 13 deaths this year.
He added that overdose deaths seem to be on track to reaching numbers comparable to 2017 to 2018, the worst years for those types of deaths on record in B.C.
From the start of 2020 until the end of September, there have been 1,202 overdose deaths throughout the province.
At the end of September 2017 and 2018, the numbers were at 1,180 and 1,176, respectively.
“I think we’re on track for that provincially — or to surpass that — and also locally,” said Van Veen.
He said at the end of 2019, deaths were starting to come down, prompting some cautious optimism.
However, when COVID-19 orders around social distancing came into place, much of that progress was lost.
“All of these things are really important and great things to prevent COVID transmission but not great for people who struggle with mental health and addictions,” said Van Veen.
“People using drugs alone is the most dangerous thing you can do in the context of widespread fentanyl contamination.”
People have been making fewer visits to treatment and overdose prevention sites, and are using at home alone, he said.
“That did translate into pretty extreme rates of death,” Van Veen said.
“This is to show you that we are still very much in the midst of the overdose crisis.”
Council responded to the proposal of an overdose prevention site with support.
There are two crises happening in the province, Coun. Armand Hurford said.
“I think the service that’s going to be provided at this facility is much needed by our community,” he said. “The opioid crisis hasn’t been getting its due attention in the last little while.”
Coun. Doug Race said that he supported the location, as it was previously used for similar purposes.
He added that having Helping Hands handle the day-to-day affairs of the site should alleviate concerns from the neighbours.
“This is a medical need, and we should be paying as much attention to this as we pay attention to other medical needs in our community,” said Race.
Coun. John French said there’s a world of difference between the number of resources put into preventing the spread of COVID-19 compared with what’s been allocated to help the overdose crisis.
As of Nov. 10 there have been 284 COVID-19 deaths.
“This is overdue in my mind,” French said.
