The many-tentacled issue of substance use and misuse in our community needs to be dealt with with a cooperative approach.
That was one of the main messages delivered Monday night at the Mayor’s Forum on Substance Use held at Guelph City Hall.
Roughly 75 attendees, many of them who work in areas connected to the issue, heard from a variety of speakers who represent different, yet connected, areas of the spectrum.
“We can’t arrest ourselves out of this,” Guelph Police Chief Jeff DeRuyter told the audience.
“We haven’t had a lot of success in many, many years in combating drug activity,” said DeRuyter, speaking from the community safety point of the issue.
He said it’s not just a police issue and that new strategies are needed as different pieces of the puzzle collaborate.
“We can only expect things are going to get worse before they get better,’ DeRuyter said of illegal drug activity.
While fentanyl is the latest drug to worry police, crystal meth remains the number one issue. From 2013 to 2015 there was a 1,600 per cent increase in meth seizures and a 500 per cent increase in arrests related to that particular drug.
But Monday’s meeting wasn’t just about what is being done to combat illegal drug activity.
It was also about what is being done to help those who use and misuse drugs.
Mayor Cam Guthrie said he organized Monday’s meeting because he had been “inundated” over the past several months with calls, mostly in regards to community safety.
“The number one thing that people are saying, and I don’t blame them, is ‘what are we doing about this’ and actually, we’re doing a lot.”
The speakers included Adrienne Crowder, Manager of the Wellington Guelph Drug Strategy, which was formed in 2006 and includes 30 different organizations.
She spoke of the various initiatives aimed at prevention, harm reduction, community safety and treatment and recover.
Stephen Dewar, Chief of Guelph-Wellington Paramedic Service, said that anecdotally speaking, his staff haven’t noticed an increase in the number of overdoses, but they have noticed more serious and deadly overdoses.
Dewar also spoke about the increasing distribution of Naloxone, a nasal or needle that reverses the effect of opioids in overdose victims.
He said he wasn’t “clear that there’s been enough public education” about Naloxone and that many paramedics are hesitant to use it because patients often suddenly “wake up” anxious, frightened and combative.
Dewar said education is key when it comes to drug prevention.
“We believe we need to focus on education and we need to educate the children,” said Dewar, repeating what several people said on the night, that high school is too late to begin educating children about drug use.
Colin McVicker, Program Director of Sanguen Health Services, focused on harm reduction when addressing the audience.
“When we’re doing harm reduction it’s about honouring every life,” McVicker said.
“If we are going to make any changes folks … we are going to have to engage our most marginal people.”
Using a curious lense as opposed to a moral lense was key to dealing with drug use and misuse, McVicker said.
“We need a less moral/fer response and a more curious/engagement response,” he said.
The only area of the issue not heard from at the podium at Monday’s forum was someone who has or is dealing with substance issues.
Rita Sethi, Director of Community Health and Wellness with Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health, said public health is starting a to paint a picture of what’s happening in our community.
She said opioid-related visits to emergency rooms and hospitalization in this region is higher than the provincial average, but deaths are lower.
“We don’t know why these rates are the way they are,” Sethi said.
“We need to collectively work together to be able to tackle this problem,” she said.
