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Originally Posted by powderjunkie
The conservative griftosphere is starting to transform their gay-conversion camps to these rehabuse centres
Emergency personnel get paid whether they respond to a car accident or an OD or wash their personal vehicles in the bay because its a quiet day.
It would be lovely to magically right-size those resources, but you are not finding money from those budgets anytime soon. In the looooong run perhaps it works out a bit that way (if new measures are succesful and sustainable...and not just a one-off political announcement)
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I think everyone needs to agree that a sustainable solution is going to cost a lot of money, and that starts by agreeing that we are already spending a lot of money.
unfortunately the UCP ( and covid) has meddled with opiate surveillance, (anecdotally we know the problem is worse now), the Q1 reports in 2020 for Alberta indicate that at minimum 4% of all urban hospital visits is related to opiate response. At some urban hospitals that number increases to 14%. In One hospital 19% of stays were related to drug poisoning! That is at a cost of $9,172 a stay. ( I know, this is the BC thread, I digress).
https://open.alberta.ca/dataset/f4b7...rt-2020-q1.pdf
https://www.albertahealthservices.ca...pital-stay.pdf
Again, most people who have worked in public health, or have a basic understanding of public health know that sustainable funding for the upstream determinants of health is the priority. I am un wavering in this position Housing Sustainability, Education, Harm reduction are crucial.
Still, it is reckless to have a catch a release system. There needs to be a serious and specific investment into mandatory addiction treatment. Addicts are powerless, they have lost their agency.
Mandatory treatment is not a novel concept, it has been a standard practice for public health concerns since 1913. Those with active Tuberculosis have to comply with daily observed therapy or they will be apprehended. Public Health workers do their best to intervene in every way possible to avoid that outcome, and we should do the same with drug addicts, but eventually the matter is out of their hands.