Kelowna wants its municipal parks exempted from B.C.'s drug decriminalization project

The mayor of Kelowna, B.C., says the city is lobbying the province to exclude parks from drug decriminalization rules that took effect this year.

Tom Dyas said last Thursday that his municipality had asked the B.C. government to make an exception for the Central Okanagan city that would allow it to prohibit illicit drugs being used in municipal parks.

The request comes amid a federally approved three-year pilot decriminalizing the personal possession of up to 2.5 grams of cocaine (crack and powder), methamphetamine, MDMA and opioids (including heroin, fentanyl and morphine).

Dyas said he has received a "positive reaction" to his request from provincial officials.

"I know that they'll go back, and they will look at it and come back to us," he told host Chris Walker on CBC's Daybreak South.

"We would be in favour, as a city, to have parks and playgrounds also incorporated into excluded areas."

Other B.C. municipalities make similar attempts

Other B.C. municipalities have attempted to pass bylaws to outlaw drug consumption in public spaces.

The city council in Campbell Riveron Vancouver Island dropped its plan to pass such a bylaw in late February after a motion in favour of it was made a month ago. According to alocal news report, council voted to abandon the plan after receiving a letter of opposition from the Island Health authority and facing a legal challenge from the Vancouver-based Pivot Legal Society.

Sicamous in B.C.'s Shuswap region is still considering whether to adopt a similar bylaw.

Mayor Colleen Anderson says as elected officials, she and her councillors bear a duty to protect local residents from illicit drug use in public parks.

"In parks where, you know, for the summer, there are probably more children. We're very concerned about the impact on our youth.

"[If] someone does OD [overdose] in front of a child it's traumatic," she said on CBC'sDaybreak South.

Kelowna's Dyas said he's concerned decriminalization in B.C. may create an influx of drug users from other provinces to parks in Kelowna during the summer.

Dr. Carol Fenton, the medical health officer for Interior Health, disagrees she argues that decriminalization hasn't resulted in increased substance use in other countries like Portugal, and Kelowna's proposed policy would perpetuate the stigma against drug users.

"There are objective harms from policies like this," she said on Daybreak South. "There isn't a problem already. So we need to be really careful."