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“Over the last year, we’ve been getting more agreement from more and more people that something needs to happen, and we’ve got some ideas about how to do that,” Trew said. “Unfortunately, it’s progressed more slowly than I would have liked.”

Saying, ‘Get on this waiting list and we’ll see you in a few weeks,’ is nobody’s idea of the right way to do that.

Senior decision-makers at the province’s health authority and Alberta Health have been considering a proposal to open access to treatment since at least October, though no decisions have been made. Trew said he hopes these efforts, once approved, would increase spaces for 1,000 new patients within a year.

“When people’s lives are chaotic, and they come into a decision that they need to get out of this, and the only way to do that is to move into treatment, then you need to help them as soon as possible,” he said. “Saying, ‘Get on this waiting list and we’ll see you in a few weeks,’ is nobody’s idea of the right way to do that.”

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Since her eldest son died, Dana Parkes has found green residue on Q-tips and Kleenex lying around her Copperfield home, signs that her 16-year-old boy has been snorting fentanyl. Conversations in which she’s tried to convince him to stop have been tough.

“He goes, ‘I lost a brother, mom; you don’t know what it’s like,'” Dana said. “I said, ‘I lost a child, and you don’t know what that’s like. And I don’t want to make it two. And you don’t want your little sister to have lost both of her big brothers.'”

Photo by Leah Hennel / Calgary Herald

A few weeks ago, Dana’s 12-year-old daughter confessed that, just because she doesn’t cry as much as her mom, it doesn’t mean she doesn’t cry at all; she does it alone, in bed. The seventh grader has become protective of her brother during arguments over his drug use.