By Kendall Robertson

Call For A Sobering Centre In The City

Oct 12, 2018 | 4:31 PM

PRINCE GEORGE- An inquest into the 2016 death of Jamie Shanoss wrapped up last month with several suggestions by the jury, one of them being a sobering centre. That may have helped to save Shanoss’ life as he died of acute alcohol poisoning in police custody after he was arrested for being drunk in public. A sobering centre is a safe place for people to go to sober up and in some cases will be connected to harm reduction programs and medical services. RCMP say that is something that’s much needed in our community as a large number of people that are brought to the ‘drunk tank’ haven’t committed a crime. “We’re criminalizing a marginalized portion of the public that I think is forgotten about a lot, especially with the hype over the opioid situation, there’s a segment of the population that has severe alcohol issues that often gets forgotten about,” said Inspector Shaun Wright. “It’s a lot of additional stress, it’s putting double duty onto the police to try and manage the welfare of these people who are in custody for no reason other than being intoxicated and having nowhere to go and at the same time we’re trying to balance our dealings with genuine criminals.”

There are a handful of sobering centres across the province that are run by regional health authorities and social services agencies. Northern Health says it’s aware of the benefits of those centres. “The reason that this has come up is because someone, unfortunately, passed away due to acute alcohol poisoning, that is potentially preventable with a safer place for someone to be monitored,” said Medical Health Officer, Dr Andrew Gray,”at the same time over the same three year period we’ve had about 70 people die of a fentanyl overdose so I think we need to think broadly about safety for people who use drugs and how to provide safe care for everybody that has addictions.”

Gray adds there is a safe consumption site that runs six days a week from 1 until 6:30. He says the idea of a sobering centre with a supervised consumption site has been brought up within Northern Health before but there are no plans in place to implement one in our community at this time.