One ex-prisoner said he feared his addiction would return him to crime.
Rob MacDonald, who was released last week on supervision from the Atlantic Institution maximum security facility in New Brunswick after a 10-year stint in four facilities, poses outside of a clinic where he is receiving addiction treatment in Halifax on March 15, 2019.
MacDonald, 41, said he feared his 15-year opioid addiction would cause him to returned to crime while using illicit drugs on the outside so he tried desperately to get treatment from the federal prison service.Rob MacDonald, former inmate When he was incarcerated at British Columbia's Kent Institution between 2017 and 2019 for drug-related offences and robbery, MacDonald said debilitating withdrawal symptoms had him seeking potentially deadly fentanyl-laced drugs that were smuggled into the prison.The Correctional Service linked MacDonald to a clinic in Halifax upon his release nearly two weeks ago and he is now prescribed the opioid substitute Suboxone.
"It's unclear to me why the budget has remained the same and decreased in the past when clearly the number of incidents is increasing," he said of overdoses that caused 41 deaths between 2010 and 2018. It did not respond to requests for information on whether its budget will be increased to meet the demand for more treatment.
"He needed medical help and he got forced, cold-turkey withdrawal in a feces-smeared segregation cell and cruel mistreatment from guards. And it was so unbearable that he tried to kill himself three times," Elson said from Toronto.While Correctional Service guidelines state a doctor is required to interview offenders before they are involuntarily tapered or cut off from methadone or Suboxone, Elson said his client was not seen by a physician.
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