LETHBRIDGE—Hours before attending a Lethbridge town hall meeting about the social and economic impacts of supervised drug consumption sites in Alberta Wednesday evening, Lou Mate Jr. walks around outside the city’s site almost like he’s surveying a disaster area.

He slowly walks around the unassuming brick building housing the site, pointing out neighbouring businesses that have shut down, vacant buildings, gates, security cameras, spots where he says he’s witnessed crime, and places where he says people have defecated.

“This was a nice business neighbourhood,” says Mate Jr., who owns Graphcom Printers, located directly behind the site. He says his walk-in business has dwindled significantly since the site opened in 2018.

A government-appointed panel tasked with looking at the socioeconomic impacts of various drug consumption sites around Alberta held the first of two public meetings Wednesday in Lethbridge, where a fierce debate over the city’s consumption site has been taking place. The site, run by the non-profit organization ARCHES, receives about 600 visits every day, making it the busiest drug consumption site in North America.

Critics of the review say the panel’s mandate appears to ignore the merits of harm reduction and focuses only on negative impacts of the site. The panel’s mandate also does not include an examination of homelessness in the communities, which advocates say plays a big part in drug addiction. The government has said the benefits of the sites and of harm reduction are both well documented and they instead want to look at crime rates, overdoses reversals, patient referrals to treatment providers and complaints of social disorder.

Hundreds streamed into the Coast Lethbridge Hotel & Conference Centre Wednesday evening to express their feelings and offer their views about the site.

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Around 30 people demonstrating outside before the public meeting were mostly opposed to the site as it’s currently operated. Some called for the site’s funding to be terminated. One man sold T-shirts and mugs that said “take back the north.” He explained the slogan stood for a desire to see the community cleaned up.

Many had emotional stories for the eight-person panel, including a mother whose child was pricked by a discarded needle, people who had worked in the streets, and those who had dealt with their own addiction struggles.

Chloe Gust said she hoped the panel would still consider the positive aspects of harm reduction.

“I understand that there’s a lot of fear,” she told reporters. “But this fear is intensely racially motivated, economically motivated, and it has been felt in Lethbridge for a very, very long time.”

Advocates of the site see it as a compassionate step in the healing process for addicts, but believe more funding from the provincial and federal government is needed to secure treatment services. They also see closing the site as a step backwards that would see drug use and needle debris in the city increase and spread.

Janessa Fyfe told the panel her son had been pricked by a discarded needle at a Lethbridge park. She asked that the needles stop leaving the consumption site. She said she doesn’t buy the argument that closing the site would result in needle debris spreading to a wider area of the city.

“I don’t believe that that’s the case,” she told reporters. “It wasn’t happening before the consumption site.”

Lori Hatfield’s son is an addict who has used the services at the site. She told his story to the panel on Wednesday, calling her visit to the site with him “wonderful.”

“My son does not want to be an addict,” she said. “Some days he wins the fight, some days he does not, but he is still functional, he still loves, he still feels.”

During an interview with Star Edmonton, Hatfield said that when she looks at the site, she sees it as representing “compassion and a desperate need that we have in our city.”

“It shows the rest of the services that we need to have.”

She argued that the site saves lives, and that this should be put above business interests.

An August report from the Alberta Community Council on HIV (ACCH) said that supervised consumption sites reversed more than 4,000 overdoses since they started in Alberta, according to data provided by the sites.

Hatfield and Mate Jr.’s stories are microcosms in a wider debate being played out in Lethbridge that’s become politicized and heated at times. Earlier last month, Lethbridge city council voted down a motion that would see funding for the site halted until the provincial review could be completed. In late August, a man was arrested after driving past the Lethbridge site and shooting at it with a paintball gun.

Critics of the site appear to agree that treatment is a logical step in the process, but see the site as a beacon drawing addicts to the city, hurting businesses, driving up crime in the downtown area and increasing needle debris.

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Mate Jr. wants to see more treatment options for people struggling with addiction and empathizes with them, but he wants a more robust approach that includes prevention, enforcement, harm reduction and treatment.

“If I got a friend or a buddy who has a problem with alcohol, I’m not going to take them to the bar and discuss it,” he said.

“The best possible way to help them is help them get treatment.”

The panel, which is being chaired by former Edmonton police chief Rod Knecht, will host a second town hall in Lethbridge Thursday. It will be followed by a meeting with stakeholders on Friday. Mate Jr. says he and his newly formed group, the Lethbridge Citizens Alliance, will attend that meeting and ask the panel to reconsider the location of the site and how it is operated.

There are six other town halls scheduled in the coming weeks in Edmonton, Calgary, Grand Prairie and Red Deer.

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