Western Standard - Smith proposes ‘involuntary treatment’ for addicts.

00:00:00.000 what is the effect on the rest of society when you have a large group of people

00:00:07.520 making it difficult for everybody else to to to do what they normally do the difficulties

00:00:13.600 we've heard on the sea trains you i was just driving home the other day and i saw somebody

00:00:19.680 already set up their camp in a doorway i used to live down in the belt line and some of the

00:00:24.000 stuff you saw that went on down there if you're a shopkeeper the first thing you had to do was to

00:00:28.960 scrub down your your your doorstep i don't want to get too explicit here you know what i'm talking

00:00:34.720 about why should people have to put up with that that is another argument that's not a sympathetic

00:00:40.720 one people say well you know we've got to make accommodations for for people who struggle

00:00:46.560 well all right when exactly are you prepared to step in and say this person needs help

00:00:54.080 if they don't get it they're going to kill themselves what we're talking about

00:00:58.080 is when they are apprehended for something else then they have that choice it's still a choice

00:01:05.440 yes well a choice perhaps between yes a full incarceration or entering a treatment program

00:01:10.640 and uh i mean we've seen i think that's why even you know governments are finally musing about it the

00:01:15.760 enablement approach has failed it's failed everywhere it's been tried the west coast is a disaster from

00:01:22.000 from from los angeles all the way up to vancouver anywhere where they try saying if we can just

00:01:27.600 give enough safe consumption administer naloxone enough times they're they're going to come out of

00:01:32.320 their fog and voluntarily go into treatment and they don't and they won't the other aspect of this too

00:01:38.720 though i mean as rachel notley was of course playing the politics saying daniel smith wants to

00:01:44.080 incarcerate innocent albertans and such but uh i believe i saw that they would it wouldn't be

00:01:49.600 arbitrary they would set up a tribunal and i would imagine set some bars has this person i'm just

00:01:54.880 throwing things out you know been repeatedly uh brought in for this has there been medical distress

00:01:59.440 have they uh perhaps threatened others uh safety or the well-being of businesses i mean a number of

00:02:04.800 check boxes before you get to the point of forcing the issue and one point that i want to build on is

00:02:13.760 with alberta they're doing the alberta model whereas bc has the bc model and the alberta model is more

00:02:18.560 focused on treatment whereas the bc models were focused on harm reduction i know for a fact that uh

00:02:24.720 daniel smith's current chief of staff marshall smith uh used to be a former drug addict in the downtown

00:02:30.720 east side of vancouver and he talked about how eventually it was a treatment model like what's

00:02:35.360 going on in alberta to which ultimately brought him out of the addiction and you know treated him

00:02:41.760 i mean they need treatment they won't come out alone they can't you can't just cold turkey it you

00:02:46.240 can't white knuckle it and i mean it's great for the people who've never uh experienced withdrawal

00:02:51.760 you know i i they can't understand um i and again i've been open about it i had to deal with my

00:02:58.560 alcoholism i had to go to a lot of aa meetings and deal with a lot of things to get there and i

00:03:03.600 had a lot of help one of the aspects of that is to be able to get around other people who have

00:03:09.200 experienced that so you can share your experiences and movements and you network but you've got to

00:03:14.400 get into that program that that first step and then to try and think that some of those addicts when

00:03:19.680 they're at the point of sleeping behind a dumpster unconscious or they're shuffling down the street

00:03:24.160 again you know emaciated and covered in sores they're not going to voluntarily choose to come

00:03:28.480 in at that point and then we're looking at intervention to save a life a life by that

00:03:32.400 point they're not going to make it if we leave them as it is but that's what we're being asked to do

Western Standard - April 25, 2023