A B.C. organization focused on fighting addiction says the province should look at special high schools and college programs for young people with substance use problems.
It’s one of 39 priority actions contained in a report from the BC Centre on Substance Use (BCCSU), which calls for a significant investment in long-term recovery programs to be made available, regardless of someone’s ability to pay.
Speaking on CKNW’s The Simi Sara Show Marshall Smith, the centre’s senior adviser for recovery services and report co-author, acknowledged the need for harm reduction programs like supervised consumption sites.
LISTEN: New reports finds that help and support should be readily available for people suffering with addiction
But he said there’s a huge gap in services for people who are ready to get clean and transition back to a healthy life.
Smith said the province should look at the idea of recovery high schools, which already exist in Toronto.
“These are small high schools for young kids, teenagers who are high school age,” he said.
“Instead of institutionalizing them in a treatment centre on-and-off, on-and-off, we create a school that they attend that blends their academic program with recovery supports and recovery programming.”
Smith said similar initiatives should be looked at for colleges, environments where he said the culture around drug and alcohol encourages addiction.
Smith, a former high-ranking civil servant, has battled addiction himself and says he is living proof that the recovery system can work.
But the current system ranges from public to not-for-profit to private, often leading to better services for those who can afford them, he said.
Smith added that publicly funding the recovery system can pay dividends, preventing costly interactions between people with addiction problems and the court and healthcare systems.
“It’s about $12 return for every dollar invested into recovery,” Smith said.
Josh McDearmid, who is currently in the recovery process himself, said many people who are struggling with addiction aren’t aware of their options.
“While I was out there on the streets and using my resources like going to the shelters or food lineups or youth community centres, they never once mentioned recovery or that option to me,” he said.
“And they’d see me loaded or intoxicated every day.”
McDearmid said it was a friend that reached out to him about recovery, an option that helped him get off the streets.
Among the key findings of the report, which consulted with people undergoing the recovery process, were that a majority of respondents didn’t seek help earlier because they didn’t think their problem was serious enough.
Smith said many also said they didn’t reach out because they were afraid of the stigma attached to their addiction — a problem he said was linked to the image of an addict as someone who lives on the Downtown Eastside.
“The big show that is going on in our community is people who have homes and workplaces,” said Smith.
“This is going on at every kitchen table and boardroom table from Fort St. John to to Victoria. They are the 90 per cent of the substance using population. A lot of it is alcohol, cannabis, cocaine.”