Expert to Lethbridge: Closing Overdose Prevention Site Puts Lives at Risk
Morgan Magnuson (PhD Candidate)
Instructor @ University of Lethbridge
Researchers and frontline health workers are warning that Lethbridge City Council’s recent decision to urge the province to close the city’s overdose prevention site risks repeating the deadly consequences that followed the shutdown of the former supervised consumption site in 2020. The motion, which passed 7–2, did not appear on campaign platforms and, according to harm-reduction expert and registered nurse Morgan Magnuson, was not accompanied by meaningful public consultation or engagement with the extensive body of evidence supporting overdose prevention sites. Magnuson, who teaches in the University of Lethbridge’s Faculty of Health Sciences and has spent the past several years studying the impacts of SCS closures and municipal drug policy, says she learned of the council motion not through government channels but from nursing staff at the OPS who reached out, shocked and discouraged. “They were very disappointed and surprised,” she said in an interview, adding that the proposal was never presented to voters and arrived without warning. Her concern, she says, is simple and immediate: “I really am worried that people might die if the overdose prevention site closes.”
Magnuson’s research, published earlier this year in the Harm Reduction Journal, documents the aftermath of the closure of the ARCHES-run supervised consumption site, once the busiest in North America. The study, based on 37 interviews with people who use substances and staff from local service organizations, found that the SCS had provided far more than supervised consumption. It offered medical care, sterile supplies, social supports, cultural programming, housing assistance, and basic wound care—services that vanished overnight when the province cut funding and shut the site down. Participants in the study described losing trusted relationships with health workers, struggling to access clean supplies, and being forced into more dangerous patterns of use. Many believed the closure directly contributed to an increase in drug-poisoning deaths, summarized by one participant’s stark comment: “We’ve lost a lot of lives.”
Magnuson says the current OPS plays a similar role in connecting people to the health-care system, even though it is a more limited model than the former SCS. She stresses that the facility is often one of the only consistent points of contact for unhoused and highly marginalized residents. Staff provide sterile needles and pipes, basic first aid, wound care, and non-judgmental interaction—things that, for people living rough, can be lifesaving long before poisonings occur. “It’s one of the few places where people can see a friendly face and get compassionate, skilled care,” she said. Losing that point of contact, she warns, would once again erode trust in health services, just as her research documented after the SCS shutdown.
Critics of the OPS, including some councillors, have pointed to concerns about public disorder and safety. Magnuson says those concerns are important but argues that closing the site worsens them, not the opposite. When people no longer have a safe indoor place to use, they use alone, use outdoors, or use in unsafe, hidden environments where no one is present to intervene. She points out that there has never been a fatal overdose inside a supervised consumption or overdose prevention site in Canada. Any strategy that pushes people away from supervised spaces increases the likelihood of public consumption, emergency calls, and preventable death. She also rejects the political framing that harm reduction competes with recovery programs. “It’s an oversimplification,” she said. “We need services across the continuum of care. Overdose prevention sites are actually a key connection point that help people get into detox and treatment when they’re ready.”
Magnuson also notes an important gap in Lethbridge’s current system: the OPS only supervises injection, even though a large share of local substance use now occurs through inhalation. Her interview and research findings show many people have shifted from injecting to smoking in an effort to reduce risks from the increasingly toxic supply. Without inhalation services, those people have no supervised option at all. If council wanted to act on evidence, she says, they would be advocating to expand the OPS, not close it, by adding supervised inhalation and restoring the wraparound services eliminated in 2020.
The open letter Magnuson co-authored, now signed by hundreds of academics, health workers, and community members, calls on council to reverse its request to the province and to instead ground municipal decisions in the available research. She says the stakes are not abstract policy questions—they are life and death. “Closing the site will make people less safe,” she said. “If the overdose prevention site shuts down, people might die.”
Disclaimer:
Illicit and inhaled drugs carry serious and potentially fatal health risks due to toxicity, contamination, and unpredictable potency. This article is provided for informational purposes only and should not be interpreted as medical advice.
Support in Alberta:
For help with substance use, Albertans can contact the 24/7 Addiction Helpline at 1-866-332-2322, or call 911 in an emergency. Naloxone kits and additional services are available through Alberta Health Services.
