Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says she can no longer continue to watch people kill themselves with drugs on the street..The UCP government appears to be considering the potential development of a Compassionate Intervention Act in the province to help people struggling with addiction..“We've been consulting on this for a number of months with our Compassionate Intervention Act and the approach we want to take is to give people lots of opportunities to voluntarily choose treatment, because what we're seeing on the street is the drugs that are out there now are so deadly," Smith said on Monday..Smith admitted Alberta has seen a "surge of illicit drugs on the street."."It's a problem that peaked during COVID-19 and we're still not back to the levels that we were pre-COVID-19 of overdose and death," Smith said.."We've got to make sure that people have hope, that they have an opportunity to do it, but we believe that every single person has an opportunity and a pathway to get their lives back.".Smith said she also wants to be able to support that with voluntary measures.."The approach that we're looking at is similar to what they have in Portugal, where they have what they call a dissuasion commission so that people would have constant opportunity to come forward especially if they're having multiple incidents overdosing, where we would have opportunities to get them into treatment at every turn," Smith said.."And then we're consulting further on whether it gets to a point where they would be ordered into treatment and we haven't haven't quite finished that consultation yet.".Smith said she wants treatment to be done in a voluntary way first..The UCP government is signing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Enoch Cree Nation for a new recovery community facility serving the Edmonton area..This agreement is in addition to announcing the location of the Edmonton-area recovery community first announced in Fall 2022..READ MORE: Smith signing MOU with Enoch Cree Nation to develop a new recovery community facility.On Monday, Smith was joined by Minister of Mental Health and Addictions Nick Milliken and MLA Mark Smith to mark a milestone in the relationship between Enoch Cree Nation and the UCP government.."We think that providing these opportunities with these recovery communities is that is a good first step to get there," Smith said.."But all of this is about saving lives. All of this is about creating an opportunity so that we don't end up losing any more friends and family and loved ones and members of our communities.".READ MORE: UCP government considering the development of involuntary drug treatment.Smith admitted this is where the idea of involuntary drug treatment is coming from.."We think that this is the most compassionate way to try to address this problem because we're watching people slowly killing themselves on the street," Smith said.."We've got to draw a line and say, we're just not gonna let that happen anymore."
