Five years after the crisis the Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, Sheila Malcomson, announced the BC government will formally request the federal government grant a province wide exemption from the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.
Five people a day are dying because of the poisonous toxicity of the illicit drug supply and the BC government’s priority is to ensure people’s access to the toxic drugs that are killing them is not interrupted by legal issues.
Three days is plural [nights] not singular [night]. Nights versus night undoubtedly strikes many as being overly picky, as though sloppiness and imprecision in the use of language is inconsequential.
A few days after reading a Fraser Health Authority Request for a Proposal to implement Health Contact Services for people who use illicit drugs I read that Vancouver and the federal government were close to an agreement that would see the possession of a small quantity (personal use) of illicit drugs not result in prison time.
Central to both the Request for Proposal and the Federal/Vancouver agreement is the use of illicit drugs. The juxtaposition of the two had me shaking my head at how the Rocking Chair Principle has become so pervasive in politics, causing issues and problems to seem intractable.
I found myself thinking about how pervasive seeing what we want to see, rather than what is, has become when I came across a Request for Proposal issued by the Fraser Health Authority to implement Health Contact Services for people who use illicit drugs.
The reason the Request for Proposal brought the human behaviour/ability to see and believe what they want to be the facts or reality was the request stating that between January and November 30th 2020 there were1,548 deaths from overdose compared to 441 deaths from COVID [to November 29] and notes that the number of drug overdose deaths have increased dramatically since March 2020.
November 1, 2020 was the beginning [through March 31, 2021] of the period where extra spaces are opened to allow the homeless to get inside and out of severe winter weather conditions and temperatures inimical to survival.
When November 1st arrived Abbotsford had no plan in place to avoid unnecessary winter weather related deaths among Abbotsford’s homeless population.
