they refused to take a stand<\/a>.<\/p>\nRick Wilson is Smith\u2019s point man on drug addiction. He has no doubts. The drug site will close, though activists thought it was a salvation for addicts.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not a salvation. It\u2019s just another place for them to stay an addict. If you keep giving addicts a place to do drugs, they will just continue to do them. They\u2019re addicts,\u201d says Wilson.<\/p>\n
What was praised as harm reduction looked more like harm production to those around the site.<\/p>\n
You don\u2019t have to talk to Wilson for more than a few minutes before he says his favourite word. He repeats it many times.<\/p>\n
Recovery.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to help people. Keeping people in a continual cycle of crisis and illness is not helping them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wilson says at one end of the scale is recovery, where addicts can get out of their hell. The other end is death.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Minister of Mental Health and Addiction Rick Wilson takes part in the Rural Municipalities of Alberta (RMA) spring convention, in Edmonton on March 18, 2026.<\/p>\n
He has a message for addicts.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s hope out there. Recovery is possible for everybody. Let us give you that hand up you need to start down that trail,\u201d says Wilson.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to give you back your life and give you hope and get you back to your families.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think as a little kid you think: Boy, when I grow up, I want to be a drug addict. It\u2019s something that happens. Somebody has got to give them that hand up to break the cycle.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s our game.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Alberta government\u2019s main man on mental health and addiction is confident working with other groups, like Calgary\u2019s Alpha House, more addicts will go for treatment and begin recovery.<\/p>\n
He also believes the neighbourhood and businesses near the drug site in the highly populated Beltline will see an improvement in their quality of life.<\/p>\n
Wilson points to what happened after the Red Deer drug site was shuttered.<\/p>\n
There were no significant increases in deaths, emergency room visits or ambulance calls among the drug site users and more of them went into addiction treatment.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
A man is huddled against a pillar outside the supervised drug consumption site at the Sheldon M. Chumir Health Centre on October 29, 2024.<\/p>\n
Wilson expects some of the biggest backers of the drug site closing will be those who face addiction up close and personal.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I go into recovery centres and you can see people starting to get their lives back. I think those are the ones who are really going to support us because they have seen what is possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have talked to guys who thought it was never going to be possible to get out of this. They were going to just end up dying. Now they have their lives back.\u201d<\/p>\n
The man believes he is on the right track.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt really does feel right. You can actually wake up every morning thinking you are going to save people\u2019s lives,\u201d says Wilson.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat could be a better job?\u201d<\/p>\n
rbell@postmedia.com<\/a><\/p>\nRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mark your calendar. Who said there are no good news stories. Some have waited years, many years, for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548108,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194293],"tags":[213368,26353,49,2798,177137,48,22348,122435,213367,208197],"class_list":["post-548107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-calgary","tag-addicts","tag-alberta-government","tag-ca","tag-calgary","tag-calgary-city-hall","tag-canada","tag-drug-addiction","tag-drug-consumption","tag-drug-unit","tag-rick-wilson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548107\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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