ARCHES expanding the capacity of its safe consumption site

Since opening their doors to the supervised consumption site in February, ARCHES has expanded its facility.

Currently, Lethbridge has the busiest and largest safe consumption facility in Canada.

Since it opened in February, the supervised consumption site has received more than 64,000 visits, averaging 490 per day.

The facility started with six booths for users and has added four in past renovations. In their most recent expansion, they added seven booths bringing the total to 17.

The ARCHES felt the expansion was needed to address the growing opioid crisis.

“We continue to see more and more people, either directly or indirectly affected by the opioid crisis,” said ARCHES executive director Stacy Bourque. “At this point, the crisis is growing faster than the services are being put in place.”

Bourque added that the nurses at ARCHES have responded to 578 medical emergencies instead of sending people to the hospital.

ARCHES says more people are going through treatment than ever before, because it’s much more accessible.

According to National report: Apparent opioid-related deaths in Canada released September 2018 on canada.ca, from January to March, there has been 195 opioid related deaths in Alberta and 1,036 nationally.

ARCHES is doing what they can to combat the issue, but are also facing criticism from the public.

“No matter how much you hate this, or you feel that it’s enabling, or you can’t get behind it, there has been 64,730 uses that have happened inside in the last six months,” Bourque continued.

“It’s 13,544 visits last month. If we close the doors to facility tomorrow, those visits will flow back out into the community. Even though this isn’t a perfect solution and nobody said it would be, it is containing it to a certain degree.”

The use of harm reduction programs like the supervised consumption site will provide some relief to health care costs.

“Every dollar spent in harm reduction, it saves five from our healthcare system,” said ARCHES director Jill Manning.

ARCHES has reduced needle distribution by 33 per cent since this time last year, but the crisis is continuing to grow, according to both ARCHES and the Canadian national report.

Bourque says the situation is going to get worse before it gets better and the program needs time to grow and establish.

“Whether we exist or not, there is a problem in this community and it needs to be addressed,” Bourque said.

ARCHES offers a variety of other programs including free addictions counseling to those in need.

Visit https://www.lethbridgearches.com/ for more information.

Copyright © 2024. All Rights Reserved. No part of this website may be reproduced without written consent. Please contact digitalcomm@lethpolytech.ca for more information. We encourage all readers to share their comments on our stories, photos, video, audio, blogs, columns and opinion pieces. Due to the nature of the academic program, comments will be moderated and will not be published if they contain personal attacks, threats of violence, spam or abuse. Please visit our editorial policy page for more information.
Related Posts