'Letting down the community': Advocates speak out over council's vote against decriminalizing small amounts of drugs

Advocates are weighing in after city council struck down a motion to decriminalize small amounts of drugs.

On a Saturday morning, Arlene Last-Kolb was making cookies for the upcoming Black Balloon Day, a day to celebrate the lives lost to overdoses. Last-Kolb has been advocating and participating in overdose awareness events since her son died in 2014 of fentanyl poisoning.

"Here I am seven years later and nothing really has been done. The only thing that has been done, has been done by advocates," said Last-Kolb, cofounder of Overdose Awareness Manitoba and a board member of Moms Stop the Harm.

In a city council meeting on Thursday, council voted on a motion that would ask the federal government to decriminalize small amounts of drugs in Winnipeg.

After much debate, the vote split 8-8, meaning the motion didn't pass. It is a decision that Last-Kolb calls disappointing.

"To the eight that voted against this, you are letting down families," she said.

But Marion Willis, the founder and executive director of St. Boniface Street Links, said the motion's failure could give more time to better prepare for decriminalization.

"You don't build your house first and then put the basement under it. You need to actually build the foundation," said Willis. "You know, to support decriminalization, it will be the way forward. It is very forward thinking. We do need to do this, but we're not ready for that yet."

According to Willis, for the decriminalization of drugs to succeed there needs to be complementary work done by municipal, provincial and federal levels of government.

Work like bill C-22 which was introduced earlier this month.

"We need to wait and see at first where the federal bill is going right now. There's a bill before the Senate to remove the minimum mandatory sentencing requirement," noted Willis.

Willis also said details like what exactly a small amount of drugs is defined as are missing from the motion.

Most importantly, Willis said there are currently not enough services like the Morberg House which her organization runs, to support decriminalization.

"Eventually moving people into the community where we continue to support them with a full slate of wraparound services for at least two years," said Willis.

But in the time it takes to get those services and rule changes, Last-Kolb says people are dying.

"It helps people that have to go out and access the steps and be the legal substances every time they have to go out and access what they need, they're putting their lives in danger," she said.

CTV News reached out to Councillor Sherri Rollins, who put forward the motion, but did not hear back yet.