The government is open to adding new inhalation sites for users of stimulants like crack, cocaine and crystal meth to counter the increase in overdoses observed in recent months, but the location of such sites is already debated.
“We must move forward with more sites,” declared the Minister responsible for Social Services, Lionel Carmant, at a press scrum Tuesday afternoon. “The challenge is to check the quality. It is often the products that are diluted in this that cause respiratory arrest and death. »
In the morning, The duty had revealed that stimulant substances such as crack, cocaine and crystal meth had killed seven times more people than opioids in Quebec between January 2022 and April 2023.
Supervised inhalation sites are considered by community stakeholders as a good way to prevent deaths, but there are only three in the territory, in Quebec, Gatineau and Laval.
On Wednesday, Minister Carmant was not able to say how many new services could possibly be funded in Quebec.
Not in my… schoolyard
When a controversy broke out in September concerning the opening of a center in the Saint-Henri district, the minister declared that there would be no inhalation center near a school without social acceptability.
However, on Tuesday in the National Assembly, the liberal opposition criticized him for being too sympathetic to this project. One after the other, liberal deputies Marwah Rizqy and Elisabeth Prass spoke out for parents opposed to the presence of Maison Benoît Labre near the Victor-Rousselot school.
Mr. Carmant criticized them for being “not in my backyard” and insisted on the fact that the center in question aimed above all to help people.
More details will follow.
With Alexandre Robillard