Alberta city struggling with surge in opioid deaths as advocates call for more safe injection sites

CTV National News: Opioid epidemic escalating The opioid epidemic is escalating and while B.C. is the hardest hit, Alberta is also seeing a surge. CTV's Melanie Nagy explains.

TORONTO — With at least three people dying every day, the opioid crisis has claimed more lives in Alberta than COVID-19.

While B.C. has been hit the hardest with more than 1,000 opioid-related deaths this year, Lethbridge, Alta. has seen the highest per-capita rate of overdoses amid the pandemic, and the community is struggling to find a solution to the crisis.

Tim Slaney, a long-time harm reduction advocate and organizer of the Lethbridge Overdose Prevention Society, says the opioid situation has become "really dire" in the city after the government closed the city's Supervised Consumption Site in August.

"We are three times higher than the provincial average and the government is responding by closing services," Slaney said in an interview with CTV News.

The Alberta government pulled its funding for the supervised drug consumption centre after an audit revealed financial irregularities. With the sanction consumption site now closed, there is only a small mobile unit operated by the government where people can safely use drugs in the city.

As overdoses continue to surge, Slaney says the mobile unit can't meet demand. In response, he has turned a small portion of a city park into a nightly pop-up overdose prevention site where people can safely use drugs under supervision.

While the site is unsanctioned, Slaney said the volunteers running it are trained in overdose response and police officers monitor the site.

The Overdose Prevention Society said similar sites have been established in other cities including Halifax, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver.

However, the new pop-up consumption site has promoted protests.

"This is completely illegal for them to be setting something up like this," protester Sarah Villebrun said. "It is absolutely unnecessary to set it up half a block away from my home."

The province says the Lethbridge Overdose Prevention Society's pop-up site is illegal and is working to shut it down. The site has been issued two $300 tickets for violating city bylaws.

Despite the opposition, advocates say safe-use sites are desperately needed in Lethbridge and are calling on the provincial government to change its approach to addictions help.

New provincial data released last week revealed that the death toll for opioid overdoses set a new record in April, May and June, killing twice as many Albertans as in the three previous months.

According to the report, there were 449 opioid-related deaths in Alberta during the first six months of 2020, a 28 per cent increase from a year earlier.

Lethbridge resident Lori Hatfied told CTV News she spent years trying to help her son Michael overcome an addition to opioids.

Hatfied, who volunteers with Moms Stop the Harm, a network of Canadian families impacted by substance use related harms and deaths, says her son is in recovery now and believes safe consumption sites helped save his life.

"The pop up site, supervised consumption sites those are absolutely mandatory that need to be in place to keep people alive," Hatfied said.

"We have to have people alive because dead people do not recover."