Saskatchewan Federation of Police Officers 159 Shining a light on the lived experience of addiction in Saskatchewan (continued) THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM Solving the drug problem, according to Sergeant Robin Wintermute of the Saskatoon Police Drug Unit, isn’t going to happen overnight. “Police aren’t going to arrest our way out of this,” he says bluntly. “We have 12 investigators and there’s no shortage of work. We need to continue building community partnerships and get at the root cause of the problem,” he says, citing poverty, racism, and unresolved trauma that need to be addressed. Constable Ingrouille agrees. As a self-professed harm-reductionist and founder of Say Know (a play on the abstinenceonly ‘say no’ approach that points instead to knowledge and understanding as the answer), Ingrouille believes people will eventually become non-users if more focus is placed on meeting the needs of the person first. That’s where Kara Fletcher comes in. “We have to dig deep and understand the whys of drug use and really be willing to listen, because it’s affecting all of us,” she says, especially since the pandemic has compounded mental health issues. “We need to shift our line of questioning from ‘Why the addiction?’ to ‘Why the pain?’” “In the first phase of a study I’m working on, funded by a Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation (SHRF) Establishment Grant, we found that in Saskatoon fewer youth aged 18 to 24 are attending mental health and substance abuse services compared to older cohorts,” Fletcher notes with concern. shrf.ca Image by freepik.com
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