Illicit drug users and advocates will hold a rally at the Ministry of Health building on Blanshard Street at 2 p.m. today to call for promised harm reduction services in the city and drug decriminalization.
They want a planned supervised consumption site on Bridge Street to open immediately and funding to make it a harm-reduction community health centre, said Jack Phillips, who is a street outreach worker and harm-reduction trainer for the Society of Illicit Drug Users.
“Bridge Street is the biggest blank slate of a site. It should be run akin to a community centre by harm-reduction organizations,” said Phillips.
But the Bridge Street location is on hold “to enable more discussion around the broader services needed in the community,” said Island Health spokeswoman Kellie Hudson.
She said “building and infrastructure limitations, costs of renovations, competing priorities and the need to consider the whole Island” were also factors. In the past few months, four temporary overdose prevention sites opened Victoria and one opened in Nanaimo.
Island Health announced last year it would apply for three permanent supervised consumption sites, which have more services. Hudson said the application for a permanent site on Pandora Avenue was submitted and has been accepted by the federal government as complete and ready for review.
Drug overdoses are the leading cause of unnatural deaths in B.C. In 2016, 922 people died from overdoses — many of them involving the dangerous opioid fentanyl. In January 2017, 116 people died in B.C. from overdoses — with 18 of those deaths on Vancouver Island.
“Seeing that the numbers are still bad and knowing there is increased access to harm-reduction services is scary. More needs to be done,” said Phillips, who works at the overdose prevention site at Our Place.
The rally is part of a national day of action, co-ordinated by the Canadian Association of People Who Use Drugs who want to see increased access to opioid-substitution treatments and decriminalization of drugs.
Also this week, a meet-up group will get together at Cool Aid Society’s Rock Bay Landing shelter Wednesday evening to put together harm-reduction kits.
The event is organized by Mandy Pui who started the How to Do Some Good meet-up and Facebook group to “to give people an opportunity to be hands-on with giving back to our amazing community, learn about different causes and meet like-minded people,” she said.
Pui organizes events for non-profits and volunteers with Rotary, but wanted to do something a bit different.
“I wanted to get people engaged in the community,” she said, adding many volunteer gigs are a commitment to one thing. This group does something different each month. Next month they will help paint a warehouse for the Mustard Seed food bank, for example.
Pui said the overdose crisis is something everyone hears about in the news. “But what can you do? At least this is something,” she said.
