Parents speak out after kids find drug paraphernalia, used needles in Halifax

Halifax-area parents are voicing concerns, saying children person been uncovering cause paraphernalia and that, successful 1 case, a kid was pricked by a discarded needle.

Five months ago, Emily Medford wouldn’t person batted an oculus astatine her seven-year-old lad playing successful a heap of leaves. That’s each changed aft helium was pricked by a needle astatine a autobus halt connected Gottingen Street successful the city’s northbound end.

“You’re frightened due to the fact that you don’t know, was the idiosyncratic clean? What benignant of drugs was it? And you’re not thinking, ‘Oh my god, I request to container up this needle and instrumentality it to the hospital,'” she said.

“It was conscionable drawback your kid and let’s go.”

Across the harbour successful Dartmouth’s Highfield Park neighbourhood, residents accidental they’re utilized to seeing cause paraphernalia scattered connected the streets, particularly astatine autobus stops.

“My two-year-old picks up everything, truthful he’s perpetually picking worldly up disconnected the ground,” country resient Karissa Duffy said. “Maybe determination should beryllium a sharps instrumentality astatine each autobus stop. Maybe determination should beryllium 1 extracurricular of each flat building.”

Medford told Global News she agrees with the thought of supervised depletion sites and believes specified sites could assistance with the situation.

Duffy isn’t convinced.

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“We should beryllium moving towards much detox centres, and not voluntary. Drugs instrumentality implicit everything. The addiction takes implicit that willingness to spell get help,” she said. “We person radical who person nary structure and person nary food, truthful we’re going to spot much addictions due to the fact that there’s much radical who person nothing.”

Some clinics successful Nova Scotia — including Highfield Park’s Open Door Clinic — connection low-threshold opioid-assisted attraction arsenic a means of harm reduction. Program participants person prescriptions and tin prime them up astatine their section pharmacy.

“People with addictive disorders ne'er take for that to beryllium their life,” said Dr. David Saunders, an addiction doc astatine the clinic. “I judge that radical are calved genetically predisposed to addiction and that societal factors and traumas tin lend to that.”

Saunders said though the fig of radical struggling with addiction hasn’t increased, the usage of opioids has.

“Eight years ago, doing this work, it would beryllium antithetic to person had radical nether 20,” helium said. “Now it’s accustomed for determination to beryllium an expanding fig of radical successful precocious adolescence who person go opioid addicted.”

— with a record from Global News’ Rebecca Lau