Despite growing regional concern about the lack of space in drug rehabilitation centres, Hinton and area is unlikely to see a facility designated or built soon.

“There’s nothing in the works,” said Tasha Symon, the area supervisor for the Alberta Alcohol and Drug Abuse Commission (AADAC) from her office in Hinton. “The treatment dollars that were included in the latest budget were not local, so there’s nothing coming up in this fiscal year.”

The presence of crystal methamphetamine in the West Yellowhead region is just one of many drug-related concerns facing communities like Hinton, Edson, Grande Cache and Drayton Valley, but Symon said that the initiative for a treatment facility will have to come from within these communities.

“People can just keep lobbying the province to add more funding, or they can sit down and decide to really go after something like we’ve seen other communities do,” she said. “It can’t be agency-led or AADAC-led, it has to be led by the community.”

If AADAC and other provincially-funding support agencies don’t have the resources to get the ball rolling, the best bet for action lies with local drug action committees. Jasper has not formed such a body, but is involved in regional discussion on matters like a drug rehab facility, said Kathleen Waxer, the Community and Family Services director for the Municipality.

“We’ve been working at it from a community health perspective,” she said. “We think that if you’re just looking at drug issues, before long they lead to other concerns. I’m confident that our approach is still an effective strategy.”

Like many in her position, Waxer has said in the past that having a residential treatment or recovery centre closer at hand would help with the logistics and expenses of putting people through drug rehabilitation programs. But believing in the need for a centre is one thing, and making it happen something very different indeed, according to Symon.

“It’s come up at the drug action committees as a topic, but I don’t think there’s much action there,” she said. “The groups who are promoting the idea need to get together, do a needs assessment and go after some funding.”

The issue, and Symon’s prescription for dealing with it, is hardly new. When Hinton’s drug action committee was first struck more than two years ago, one of its initial priorities was getting started on a drug facility in town or nearby. The initial enthusiasm quickly waned, Symon recalled.

“There was lots of talk,” she said. “We even went to several banks to start arranging the money. We hear people say that we need more services, but then people aren’t willing to put the time in to make it happen. It would be nice to have something more local, because when you have to travel, you need to worry about the financial and logistical aspects of that.”

There’s another issue that Symon brings up. Wait lists. The limited number of treatment spaces in Alberta are overwhelmed by the number of people seeking treatment, a situation that has been exacerbated by the judicial trend of sentencing individuals charged with possession or trafficking to undergo residential treatment. In some cases, Symon argues, this approach is heavy-handed. That’s why she’d like to see Hinton develop a recovery centre instead of a treatment facility.

“I think we need to do some education about what methods to try before a residential program, and there needs to be options for people,” she said. “Especially nowadays when we have such issues with housing, it’s not good when people have to come back into situations where they’ve been using drugs, to the same trailer or to the same apartment.”

A recovery house-type facility that Symon envisions would include ongoing support and counselling services that would help recovering addicts return to society while living in a comfortable, safe environment. An added advantage of a facility of this kind is that it would cost less to set up and maintain than a detox or rehab centre.

“It usually does cost less, because there are a variety of funding sources supporting the individuals, and the residents themselves can contribute.”

Of course, the Yellowhead housing crunch might make it difficult to find an apartment block or similar space free.

“That might be an issue out here, because you do need to have the physical space to get it started,” Symon said.

As for a broader, region-wide approach, Symon is hopeful that a recent meeting of service providers and drug action committees will lead to a collective strategy.

“This meeting was just a sharing of information... everyone’s in a different place right now but we brainstormed some regional issues that we can work on together. The strategies will come, hopefully in June.”