A drug lock-up. Three hundred beds in Alberta’s two big cities, where incapacitated, drugged-out, people removed from the sidewalk as a danger to themselves and to others, will be housed and treated, not necessarily with their consent..Alberta to spend $180M on compassionate intervention centres .Sounds extreme but it is the obvious right thing to do and thank goodness the Danielle Smith government wants to do it.For, this is a problem with two sets of victims. The disturbing reality is that a walk through the downtown cores of Calgary and Edmonton is both depressing and potentially dangerous to the walker. It is more than that however, to the drug addicts among whom they pick their way. That way of life kills people, if not directly from dangerous drugs, then indirectly by cascading ill-health and exposure to the elements.And so reasonable people are obliged to ask: When people are destroying themselves, what is the obligation of their neighbours to step in and if necessary, be their keeper?Those who wish to argue that people who want to destroy themselves should be free to do so, are welcome to make the case.However, it’s not one that I can make. Hard as it is to be a Good Samaritan, it takes a peculiarly hard heart to argue that not only will you not help, but nobody else should be allowed to either.Few people make the argument, so the question becomes if those incapacitated by substance abuse are to be helped, who is going to do it?Voluntary agencies have a part to play, of course. They deserve every encouragement.However, only government has the authority to confine somebody against their will for their own good, until their health — and dignity — is restored.And decades ago governments did that. People with mental health and addiction problems were cared for in specialised facilities, and were not part of the streetscape.A change in treatment philosophy and the development of anti-psychotic medications led to the phased reduction of this approach, in favour of community living options. This, the idealists argued, was more respectful. And perhaps it was.Unfortunately, it didn’t work for everybody. Human nature being what it is, somebody who decided they were well enough to come off their meds, could. And then they spiralled down. But now there was no place to put them, and suddenly Canada had Third World problems... street people and lots of them.Sadly, even as these treatment centres were being phased out, Canada’s opiod crisis was taking off; nearly 10,000 people coast to coast have died of accidental overdoses since 2016. And as we now see, there was no place for opioid victims to be directed.As Premier Smith announced this morning, legislation will be needed. The facilities remain to be built, although interim accommodation is under consideration. But a start has been made.Let’s not mince words. This is incarceration. And some people will call it that, and lament what they will call a violation of the personal agency of the people placed within these facilities.But when you see a person passed out on a park bench in a pool of their own urine, that’s not somebody exercising their human rights any more than somebody drowning in the Bow River is out for a swim. Both are people with a moral claim to the help of their neighbours.Decent people think ‘something should be done.’And at last, something is. And, for every person who thinks that it’s an infringement of somebody’s personal liberty, there will be two other people, a mother and a father, who when it’s their child who is apprehended, are deeply relieved and saying, ‘Thank God!’.Poilievre promises life sentences for ‘fentanyl kingpins’.Which leaves one piece of unfinished business. While we're picking up the pieces of people ruined by fentany, some evil bastard is making a fortune out of selling it to them.The death penalty being illegal in Canada, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is offering the best practical solution. The irony of the addicts being confined, while the people who sold them their drugs that enslaved them walk free, is too much to endure. Find the kingpins and lock them up for life.
