‘Our community is crying out’: Drug users call on province to end involuntary care

Members of the Downtown Eastside community are calling on the province to end its involuntary care plans, requesting easier access to detox beds instead.

A group of people who use drugs on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside are demanding the province end its involuntary care plans for substance users.

Members of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users said forced care lacks evidence and will only further harm community members.

Darren Graham, a member of the BC Association of People on Opiate Maintenance, said this kind of treatment model does not work.

“I would have thought that we were on the cutting edge of addiction down here,” he said. “Why are we going backwards?”

Graham said what community members would like to see instead from the NDP government is more voluntary treatment beds and detox facilities.

“Our community is crying out right now for this help,” he said.

‘Deflating, defeating’

Jenni Wren echoed Graham’s requests, sharing the barriers she faced trying to access detox in Vancouver.

“You have to prove to the doctors that you’re ready,” she said. “And it’s really, really deflating, defeating. And you just lose hope so quickly.”

George Sedore, with the Eastside Illicit Drinkers Education Group, said the community also wants to see a peer-led sobering centre in the Downtown Eastside, similar to the Quibble Creek Sobering and Assessment Centre in Surrey.

“Instead of people being thrown into a drunk tank, they can take them to a sobering center that’s open 24 hours, seven days a week,” he said.

Sedore added peers with lived experience would work beside medical professionals to create “a safe place where people feel comfortable.”

‘Highly secure facilities’

In September, Premier David Eby announced the province would be opening “highly secure facilities” where people with serious addiction and mental health issues, as well as brain injuries, would receive involuntary care.

“We expect to see the opening of the Surrey pretrial treatment centres by the end of March and then shortly after the opening of the new facility in Maple Ridge,” Eby said earlier this month.

Health Minister Josie Osborne said, since 2017, the province has opened more than 700 public treatment beds, bringing the total to over 3,700.

“We are working hard to build out a seamless continuum of care – voluntary care – for people, so that no matter where they are in their journey towards recovery, that they can get access to the services they need,” she said.