EDITORIAL – Pointing the finger for allowing drugs, weapons in hospitals
(Image: CFCJ-TV)
An editorial by Mel Rothenburger.
IF YOU’VE BEEN WONDERING who to blame for allowing illicit drug consumption and weapons in B.C. hospitals, and leakage from the “safe” drug supply, here’s the answer: whoever’s in government, anywhere.
And who will fix the problem? Easy: whichever political parties are not in government, anywhere.
For the past couple of weeks, BC United MLAs have been hammering the NDP over a leaked memo from Northern Health directing hospital staff not to confiscate weapons from patients, or try to stop them from consuming illicit drugs in their rooms.
That’s been followed with the revelation that Island Health provides lockboxes so patients can store their weapons and drugs, but gives them the key so they can access them whenever they want.
Kamloops-South Thompson MLA Todd Stone calls the situation “outrageous” and demands “more than empty words” from Premier David Eby. As for Eby, his reponse is that bringing weapons and illicit drugs into hospitals for consumption is not acceptable.
Meanwhile, in the nation’s capital, the exact same situation is being blamed on the federal Liberals by the Conservatives. Kamloops-Cariboo-Chilcotin MP Frank Caputo was busy in the House of Commons this week pointing the finger at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“After eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister’s radical safe supply agenda,” he said during Question Period, “we see lives being put at risk. After the NDP-Liberal government decriminalized hard drugs, nurses in British Columbia are now being told to allow patients to use hard drugs and have weapons in their hospital rooms.”
To which the Liberals replied that they, too, are concerned, and then pointed their own finger at Eby and the NDP.
It’s one of those things tailor-made for opposition parties to lay blame on governments but it doesn’t get anything done. Eby could shut up his opponents very quickly by ending the failed decriminalization experiment and cracking down on weapons in hospitals.
Words of concern, whether from governments or opposition, aren’t enough.
I’m Mel Rothenburger, the Armchair Mayor.
Mel Rothenburger is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
Oh my. Now the Victoria Police Chief has said that criminals have been posing as homeless to infiltrate shelters and supportive housing, taking up a bed/room so they can easily sell and intimidate the actual addicts, and shake them down for their government safe supply.
Also today, the Vancouver Police Chief confirms diversion is happening.
Let’s give a few days grace to the decriminalization apologists and enablers to come out with some spin to deflect and minimize yet again.
In more recent local addict related news, The Loop is finally getting its comeuppance. Rejoice!
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My wife was a full time nurse who retired not that long ago as far as time travel is concerned.
Many days and nights I had some concerns about her work environment. Due to privacy issues and rules, she could tell me nothing.
One tell tale sign was that she would sometimes cry at home after a shift. She, as with most other nurses, suffered in silence.
It’s hard to imagine her going to work now and having to face drugs and possibly firearms being brought into her workplace. I’d be “mad as h*ll ” as the old saying goes.
Maybe I’d find some solace in a City Councillor saying that placing people in a treatment facility would be akin to putting them in a concentration camp. It’s better off to have drug paraphernalia and weapons show up at a workplace where caregivers are trying to treat other people. That’s great and wise leadership at work. Not quite the same rules as far as leaks and “sieves” in that workplace.
Or, consider a journalist in our fair city whose history of articles shows a list of bullying and bashing a guy who ran for office, won and faces daily courses of harassment. Maybe if that journalist would step down from her lofty soapbox and spend some time in a couple of spots on the North Shore, she could maybe appreciate what “balanced journalism” entails.
Maybe that journalist could ask for a few interviews from nurses who are victims of violence, threats and first hand experience with the present drug problem. That journalist might learn something at a very young age, early in her career, that bashing an individual politician only gains so much appeal.
Again, I feel sorry for nurses and hospital staff who find themselves in a dangerous predicament while simply trying to make a living and care for people.
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You forgot the bit about when the nurse from the Vancouver Sun said the drug addicts are “beating the sh*t out of elderly patients”.
A round of thanks to the politicians, dogmatic decrim and safe supply evangelists, and the foaming-at-the-mouth narcissistic compassionates who think that a regime of palliative street drug care is a good idea. That making universal access to heinous poison substances for the abuse of individuals is a logical step. That trying to unshame what should be immensely shameful is a good idea.
Thank you for continuing on and doubling down in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. You are truly insuring Canadians.
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Our provincial and federal governments are a complete disgrace in almost every way possible or imaginable. Common sense has been abandoned long ago in favor of appeasing a radical left agenda that fails everybody, including its proponents. Common sense is now viewed as radical right-wing ideology. Rick Hillier had an excellent piece on this in the National Post this week that is worth reading, on how ideology masquerading as leadership has failed Canadians.
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