EDMONTON—Alberta’s associate minister of mental health and addictions has backpedaled from comments he made Friday night suggesting naloxone kits could encourage young people to push their limits and use more drugs.

On Friday, MLA Jason Luan (Calgary-Hawkwood) met with parents and individuals with experience dealing with substance-use disorder and overdoses. After the event, he said he heard from families that young people want to “push it to their limit” when consuming opioids because they feel safer with the presence of naloxone around. Naloxone is a drug used to reverse opioid overdoses.

“You know the naloxone kit that we send as an emergency recovery for people (who) overdose? Actually, the kids take that, knowing they have the kit, because now you’re safe,” CBC reported Luan saying.

“They want to push it to their limit, how far they can go to overdose, because they’re safe, because the kit is there,” he said. “Lots of times we’re trying to make it easier, wanting to help, but it’s a fine line. If you cross that line, you become an enabler.”

Social media users seized on the comment and accused Luan of being misinformed, irresponsible and insensitive, particularly with Aug. 31 being International Overdose Awareness Day.

In a Saturday news conference, the NDP said Luan should be fired from his ministerial position for his comments, accusing him of being unfit for the job. NDP critic for mental health and addictions Heather Sweet called his remarks callous.

“This associate minister has demonstrated that he has a strong bias against those with mental health and addiction issues and I’m calling on Premier Kenney to fire him and replace him with someone who actually cares about Albertans,” Sweet said.

On Saturday, Luan attempted to clarify his comments, saying the government fully supports the distribution and availability of naloxone.

“Let me be perfectly clear: naloxone saves lives,” Luan tweeted. “We support the availability of these life-saving kits. Period.”

In a statement, Luan’s spokesperson said the government fully supports the naloxone program and would continue to fund the distribution and availability of the kits.

The statement added that Luan was responding to a reporter’s question about what roundtable participants had told him.

“Their comments about naloxone come from their own lived experience and are not the opinion or statements of the Ministers or the Government of Alberta,” the statement said.

Sweet pointed out that it’s not the first time Luan has attracted controversy for his comments on the opioid crisis. In July, in a since-deleted tweet, Luan questioned whether harm reduction research is supported by big pharmaceutical companies.

“How much of the so-called ‘evidence-based research’ is funded by the multibillion-dollar Pharma industry? Full disclosure is needed,” he tweeted.

She rejected Luan’s explanation that he was simply repeating what families told him, saying that after his initial comment about parents’ concerns, he continued to talk about “enabling behaviour.”

“When families are grieving and hurting, he’s talking about how we are enabling them to die,” she said.

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Rebecca Haines-Saah, an assistant professor at the University of Calgary’s Cumming School of Medicine, said there’s no evidence or data to support the idea that naloxone kits encourage opioid users to increase their use. She said trauma, poverty, violence and health inequities are what lead to overdoses, not the availability of naloxone.

“This is really irresponsible to share such an unfounded anecdote that may turn people away from naloxone when we already have so much stigma around overdose deaths,” Haines-Saah said. “We need more people to be trained and to be aware and to have access to naloxone kits, not to believe that it encourages overdose.”

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