Lethbridge residents hope to change needle distribution practices

By None on June 16, 2018.

J.W. Schnarr

Lethbridge Heraldjwschnarr@lethbridgeherald.com

Local residents fed up with the amount of drug activity and needle debris in the city held a rally at city hall Friday to voice concerns and collect signatures for a petition they are hoping to present to city council in order to force a change to needle distribution practices.

The “Not Another Needle Rally” ran Friday morning into early afternoon. The event, which hosted as many as 30 people at one point, was held by the Facebook page “Lethbridge Needle Support Group,” organized by local activist Lyra Angus and others.

Officially, there were three main points organizers were hoping to get out:

— That ARCHES switch to retractable syringes for their clean-needle program;

— That ARCHES enforce a needle exchange program, which would see needles handed out only to those who have brought back previous needles; and

— Lethbridge needs to force the issue of a larger treatment and rehabilitation centre for the area.

Event spokesperson Sarah Villebrun said it was important to protest the distribution of needles throughout the city as part of the ARCHES clean-needle distribution program.

“The current mandate is as many as they want, as often as they want, with no expectation of return,” she said. “That is an unacceptable policy.”

Villebrun said while she accepts that ARCHES has been trying to find different ways of managing its program, more effort is needed to find safer alternatives to the single-use syringes found in public spaces.

“If you cannot stop the needles, make them safe for our kids,” she said.

Angus said the goal is definitely not to shut ARCHES down.

“We realize addicts need help,” she said. “But we also don’t want to be putting the public and our children at risk.

“A lot of us feel like the rights of addicts are being put before the rights of our children. We just want to see some sort of system with the needles so they aren’t scattered all over town.”

Villebrun said the group has been working on the petition for the past several weeks, and has also collected letters of support from local businesses affected by the issue. Their hope is to collect 10,000 signatures and then present it to all three levels of government.

The “Needle Exchange Program” petition can be found at ipetitions.com/petition/needle-exchange-program.