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EDMONTON — Alberta’s mental health and addiction minister says new research examining the closure of a supervised drug consumption site in Red Deer found no increase in deaths or emergency service calls after the facility shut down.
In a statement Wednesday, Mental Health and Addiction Minister Rick Wilson pointed to a peer-reviewed study published in the journal Addiction and produced by the Canadian Centre of Recovery Excellence.
The study examined outcomes following the closure of the Red Deer overdose prevention site and tracked health indicators among people who had used the facility.
Wilson said the research found the closure did not lead to increases in mortality, emergency department visits or ambulance calls among those individuals.
The study also found more people who had previously used the site began opioid agonist treatment, a form of therapy used to treat opioid dependence.
Wilson said the research was possible because Alberta requires drug consumption services to collect health-care identifiers, allowing researchers to follow individuals over time using health system data.
He said the findings support Alberta’s approach to addiction policy, which the government calls the “Alberta Recovery Model,” focused on connecting people with treatment and recovery supports.
The Canadian Centre of Recovery Excellence says it plans to continue studying outcomes over a longer period to better understand the effects of the site’s closure.
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