Council committee rejects harm reduction resolution

By Tim Kalinowski on May 27, 2021.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDtkalinowski@lethbridgeherald.com

The Community Safety Standing Policy Committee of city council unanimously rejected a proposed resolution from Moms Stop The Harm for the City of Lethbridge to support the declaration of a national state of public health emergency over the opioid overdose crisis, to advocate for the decriminalization of narcotics for personal use, and to ask the federal government to consider bringing in safe supply measures so addicts would not have to turn to toxic street drugs to feed their addictions.
SPC members, which include Deputy Mayor Mark Campbell and Councillors Ryan Parker, Blaine Hyggen and Joe Mauro, felt they did not have enough information to endorse such a measure for full council’s consideration during Wednesday’s meeting.
Coun. Blaine Hyggen led the questioning of Moms Stop The Harm Lethbridge representative Lori Hatfield, who first submitted the motion for consideration back in November.
Hyggen asked questions comparing OxyContin as an opioid which was once considered “safe” to a current safe-supply drug under consideration called hydromorphine. He asked for evidence to show hydromorphine was truly safe. Hyggen also cited the opinions of a Dr. Vincent Lam, the director of Toronto’s Coderix Medical Clinic, which were critical of the federal government’s pilot programs on safe supply surrounding hydromorphine, which is increasingly ending up on the streets in the illicit drug trade. He also asked questions about destabilization which expresses the significant health concerns of people who are currently on “safe” alternatives like suboxone and methadone switching over to the harsher hydromorphine.
Hatfield said she was not a medical expert and could not answer Hyggen’s questions. She offered to take his questions away with her and bring back answers to the questions he had asked. She said since she was informed it was a submission and not a presentation to the SPC she had not prepared any formal presentation, and she was simply looking for support of the motion to bring forward to city council for consideration as other jurisdictions have done across the country.
Hyggen felt he couldn’t vote for a motion on which he has so many unanswered questions, and asked that the committee receive the submission for information only.
“Without the answers, I am just not prepared to recommend this to council,” he stated.
After the unanimous vote Hatfield said she was disappointed with the SPC decision, and felt if Hyggen had really wanted his questions answered the committee would have given her more time to go away and find the experts who could answer them.
“It would have been helpful if the questions had been submitted to me at an earlier time,” she told The Herald when asked about the vote. “I am not an expert and the wealth of knowledge you would need– you would need expert responses to the questions Blaine Hyggen was asking.”
Hatfield said she was also disappointed by what she felt was a lack of moral leadership on the overdose crisis issue shown by the SPC members during Wednesday’s meeting.
“We do have an election coming up in October, and hopefully there will be some different members sitting at the table after that,” she stated bluntly. “The bottom line to all of this is people are dying a needless and senseless death that can be prevented. There is so much stigma and shame around addiction. We cannot get out of the crisis we are in as long as that stigma revolving around addiction is alive and well.”

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