“I think Flin Flon has got a social problem on its hands. It is not a panhandling or crime problem.”
So wrote former Flin Flon area resident Ed Bowers in a 2013 letter to the editor published in The Reminder.
He was referring to concerns over public intoxication and the habit some intoxicated street people have of asking passersby for money.
Bowers suggested Flin Flon could use an addictions centre to help street people and other area residents who are hooked on alcohol, drugs or both.
He’s not the only one to have broached this idea. Yet despite Flin Flon’s ongoing problem with public intoxication – which is really a problem with addiction – no one in a position of authority seems to be talking about this issue.
Listening to candidates for city council, MP and MLA campaign over the past year-and-a-half, we have heard an awful lot about other problems: health care access, crumbling roads and rising taxes, all of which are important.
But even though other communities in northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan have addictions centres – not just counselling services, but actual residential treatment centres – to help people, there seems to be no real push for such a facility here.
I believe there are a few reasons for this.
First, as Flin Flonners we sometimes imagine ourselves as immune from the addictions and social problems experienced in other communities in our region.
If you read the weekly RCMP reports in The Reminder, you know that’s not the case (and that’s just the stuff that gets reported to police).
If you’re someone (like me) who has called 911 after noticing a person passed out on a public walkway, you can further appreciate the problem.
There also seems to be an inclination among many residents to treat addiction as a law-enforcement matter: lock people up repeatedly until they get their act together (or at least stop creating a nuisance).
How’s that working for Flin Flon? Not very well.
An addictions centre, while no panacea, at least gives Flin Flon and area residents a fair shot at overcoming their substance problems in a way being constantly thrown in the drunk tank cannot.
There is little reason to oppose an addictions centre provided it is given an appropriate location and afforded suitable resources by upper levels of government.
Such a facility would assist Flin Flon in addressing its public-drunkenness problem, which is good for everyone – the community, the addicts themselves and the RCMP.
The link between social problems and alcohol is abundantly clear; in fact, one former Flin Flon Mountie once told me 95 per cent of the calls he responded to had alcohol at their root.
By the way, those social problems aren’t limited to intoxicated people wandering around the streets and being scooped up by police. Addictions often lead to much more serious offences – and so-called “street people” are hardly the only perpetrators.
With a provincial election and a city council by-election coming up this spring, it is time for Flin Flonners to ask those in power where they stand on the community’s need for an addictions centre.
Local Angle is published on Fridays.
