Penticton, B.C.’s first and only public overdose prevention site has been forced to park its mobile unit for the foreseeable future.
Penticton and Area Overdose Prevention Society (P+OPS) announced earlier this week that the bus needs some large repairs that are currently out of financial reach.
“Penticton has not been immune to the toxic drug crisis. Luckily last year saw a decrease in fatalities in our community, and I like to think that our overdose prevention site had a piece to do with that,” said P+OPS co-founder Desiree Surowski.
“Even if we did put that money into it, she’s old. It might not even continue to work in our favour after investing in it. So, we’re kind of at a crossroads now, about how we can continue to support the community without the mobile overdose prevention site (OPS).”
The organization says the loss of their mobile site is extremely disappointing in the wake of the change in legislation.
“It’s really, really important that people who use drugs can do so in safer ways,” said Surowski. “Unless they have areas where they can go and be observed, while using the illicit market, there’s a really big risk of a fatality because of it.”
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The BC government recently announced it will ban drug use in all public places, including parks and hospitals, as part of a major overhaul of its drug decriminalization pilot project.
This would restrict personal drug use to private homes, overdose prevention sites and areas where people without homes are “legally sheltering.”
“I think it’s going to impact it really immensely. I think that there’s a lot of confusion surrounding what decriminalization was supposed to do. Decriminalization was not supposed to prevent open drug use. Open drug is only preventable by housing and services to offer people a place to use away from the public eye,” said Surowski. “Decriminalization was successful in what we envisioned its goal was, which was to stop the criminalization of people who use substances.”
Although it may be the end of the road for the mobile site, Surowski says it is not the end for the society as a whole.
“We’ve always wanted to be away from the mobile service. The mobile service does not properly triage people, it doesn’t properly meet the needs that the community has, and we’ve always wanted to move over to a stable location. I think our goal as a society is keep moving in that direction,” said Surowski.
“While we can still try and come up with some interim strategies to serve the public while we’re working on that, we just need community support. We need community support to endorse a brick-and-mortar location that can have both an OPS and hygiene services and other resources for communities.”