Drug treatment court would be beneficial in Medicine Hat

By Medicine Hat News Opinon on November 3, 2018.

It’s clear to anyone who follows crime and the courts in Medicine Hat that our city is struggling with a drug problem.

This issue isn’t unique to Medicine Hat by any means.

The entire country, especially its western portion, is being ravaged by an opioid crisis, but southern Alberta appears to have a specific problem with methamphetamine.

The Lethbridge Herald reported back in July that there’s been a 10-fold increase in province-wide meth seizures from 2015-17, which it partially attributed to “aggressive enforcement” by the Medicine Hat Police Service.

Obviously, incarcerating drug addicts — many of whom traffic in the substances they’re dependent on to fund their addiction — isn’t serving as a sufficient deterrent.

Medicine Hat needs a drug treatment court, which combines court intervention with treatment services.

The nearest one is in Calgary, but it’s so over-serviced that it’s not accepting patients from outside the Calgary area, severely limiting the opportunity for drug addicts in southern Alberta to be given the resources to start healing.

Calgary Drug Treatment Court CEO Arla Liska told the Calgary Herald last year the program is “the only alternative to incarceration for non-violent, drug-addicted offender who are facing significant jail time.

“It creates an opportunity for people who are quite entrenched in a criminal lifestyle to make substantial changes in their lives.”

This is because jail is simply not a good place to get sober.

Drugs, like opiates and meth, are easy to sneak in and are readily available for addicts seeking their fix.

The only victim in non-violent drug crimes is the user and the further entrenched in their addiction, the more likely they are to commit other, more harmful offences — fraud, theft, extortion, assault, even manslaughter or murder. Whatever helps them get their fix.

That’s why it’s of vital importance to get addicts into treatment before they go too far down the spiral.

Stigmatizing them through criminalization isn’t at all helpful.

Nor is ignoring the problem and continuing to fill our jails with non-violent drug offenders going to make it go away.

From a purely pragmatic perspective, continuing with the status quo will only serve to further overburden our already-strained justice system.

There’s a strong case to be made that drug addiction should be treated as a health, rather than criminal matter.

That’s the logic behind safe consumption sites, which provide addicts with clean needles to reduce the spread of diseases, and a safe place to use with medical professionals on hand in the event of an overdose.

The Calgary-based HIV Community Link is in the process of finding somewhere to set one up in Medicine Hat.

A local drug treatment court would be an important accompaniment, serving as an unambiguously positive further step in the direction of treating drug abuse as a public health issue.