Richmond candidates call for mental health supports, not injection sites

Supervised injection sites have become an issue in the civic election in Richmond.

Some candidates say facilities like Vancouver’s Insite should be considered as a way to address deaths from drugs. They say the site has saved thousands of lives since it opened on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside in 2003.

At the same time, others, like incumbent councillor Chak Au, a member of the Richmond Community Coalition (RCC), are deadset against the idea.

He says “many young Canadians turned to drugs as a way to escape a pressure of life,” adding mental health support should be prioritized.

“If there had been more mental health support, they will not have to sit on drugs as the answer,” he said. “Our RCC team is in support [of] mental health resources in Richmond and is committed to stand with local residents and businesses against drug injections sites in the community.”

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Municipal candidate Sheldon Starrett, who is also a member of the RCC, is also of the mind that more mental health support should be available.

He believes there isn’t a lot of support for supervised injection sites in the community, despite what supporters say.

“We believe it is in the public interest to shed some light on this important matter, because RITE Richmond, in their press release dated Sept. 26, mentions councillor Carol Day asking local voters to ‘Imagine what could be done if there was a majority of progressive voices on council.’ We don’t need to imagine. Already, the allies they are joining forces with are pushing for drug injection sites in Richmond if they are elected. That is unacceptable,” Starrett said.

RITE Richmond and the Richmond Citizens’ Association (RCA) announced last month that they were “joining forces” in the 2022 municipal election.

When reached by CityNews, Day said the comments being made by Starrett were “inflammatory.”

She notes that while RCA has stated its support of supervised injection sites, that is not necessarily her party’s position.

“But we are supporting them as co-candidates because, for the most part, we do agree with a lot of their platforms,” she told CityNews Thursday. “RITE Richmond’s position on safe injection sites is we need a made-in-Richmond solution. Most of the people who die die at home. We need to have better mental health professionals to help those people that are addicted to drugs, primarily at home. Now, if the Vancouver Coastal Health authority decides that they want to — which they have the purview of doing — open a safe injection site, we encourage that but we don’t necessarily make it our position. It’s up to the professionals to decide what the made-in-Richmond solution looks like.”

According to Vancouver Coastal Health, “there have been more than 3.6 million visits to inject illicit drugs under supervision by nurses at Insite” since the facility opened in Vancouver nearly two decades ago.

“Before there were 30 overdose interventions a month, and now, there are eight overdose interventions a day,” the Public Health Emergency, declared on April 2016, notes.

-With files from OMNI News