There wasn't an open seat left at the Coffee Pop Up and Conversations event Thursday morning at Riverview Colegiate. 

The information session was held by the Partners Against Violence committee, who were hoping to share information about the effects of Crystal Meth and the impact it's had on our city. 

"We kind of broke down our 2018 and the first three months of 2019 stats for the types of call we've been responding to such as poisoning overdose, altered mental status, altered level of consciousness and really then broke that down into the age demographic, what type of poisoning overdoses individuals are doing. Which then broke down into four different categories and we broke it down to alcohol, illegal drugs, prescription medication, and crystal meth," said CEO

and Deputy Chief of the Moose Jaw and District Paramedics. 

The three presenters took turns sharing information on behalf of their agency and how they deal with it first hand.

"The overall message I wanted to send is even the small thefts such as the people that are going through cars late at night, the people who do shoplifting to trade either those pair of jeans or the meat from a store or the pennies out of an ashtray, it's important for the public to realize that a lot of that fuels the drug world and that money is in turn traded for drugs," detailed Inspector, Devon Oleniuk.

The Inspector said to attendees that Crystal Meth became popular in our city around 1999-2000, and that they along with the local Paramedics receive calls for service in every neighbourhood of the city regarding the cheap and highly addictive drug. 

"I was really encouraged to see the interest of the community because it is truly a community response that's needed, it's not an issue just for the police, it's not just an issue for health, it takes multi-agencies and intersectoral and community approach to respond. How the community members can be of help is taking part in the task force, looking at prevention, public awareness and education,"  said Mary Lee Booth Transition Lead for Mental Health and Addictions through the Saskatchewan Health Authority. 

Booth also shared with the overwhelming crowd that when it comes to opioids, which are very different from Crystal Meth, there are take home Nalaxone kits to combat overdoses in the city. Stating that there's currently 18 out in the community now.

"There were lots of good questions, lots of interest from this we're looking at doing is this will be apart of our evaluation and we will probably look at trying to work on bringing this group back together and building on something to see how we can help our community and help families and individuals that are suffering from addictions to get the supports that they need," explained Sgt. Tim Schwartz of the Moose Jaw RCMP.

Attendees were told to report anything they see when it comes to suspicious activity of the neighbours or something they see in there area of the city, the information the Moose Jaw Police Service and Moose Jaw RCMP the better.

Thanks to the high volume of interest Partners Against Violence was able to gather a few more committee members, plus begin a task force that would be made up of volunteers who will continue help spread awareness and gather more information to share with other community members.