On Tuesday, a staff report is set to go before Abbotsford council, summarizing the results of two public forums on the issue.
According to the Vancouver Province a staff report will go before Abbotsford Council Tuesday showing that a majority of those who participated in the two community forums held to gain public input on the City’s controversial anti-harm reduction bylaw are against the bylaw.
The Report shows 85 percent of participants want Abbotsford to join every other community in Canada and adopt a harm-reduction stance with its addicts.
Abbotsford Councillor Simon Gibson has been the strongest voice supporting the denial of clean needles for drug addicts preferring to either force them into prayer, rehab or death rather than keeping them alive so they can be helped.
The Fraser Health Authority (FHA) has been fighting for the right to set up clean needle exchanges in what the vast majority of those who deal with addiction agree is the only method that works – a multi-pronged approach offering faith, abstinence, counseling and treatment as opposed to Simon Gibson’s preferred method of simply offering prayer and cold turkey detox.
The FHA has been fighting high hepatitis C infection rates and drug-overdose rates.
Simon Gibson, who has been an Abbotsford councillor for three decades, is running as a BC Liberal in this spring’s provincial election.
Wendy Bales Says: People need to have options that they feel comfortable with and to trust their options for Harm Reduction to be effective and in order to be equal for all people. People who want to get off drugs have enough to deal with and the current system isn’t working. There are religious organizations doing a lot to help people, but there needs to be other options based on health care that are neutral to any denomination or no denomination to be fair to all.
It is past time to look at changing the current system that has not been effective and put the priority back onto health care!
In the end, I believe similar to studies that housing the homeless have shown, it will likely cost less for policing, but more important will save lives.