Fort McMurray is a very unique place. If you have not heard of it, you will sooner or later. It is the site of the tar sands, a huge industrial complex being built in northern Alberta. The amount of oil being produced and the scale of everything is staggering. Everything in Fort McMurray is the biggest. The biggest dump trucks in world. The biggest excavators in the world. Projects totalling 25 BILLION dollars for a single plant. Companies building their own airstrips with their own 737's flying 5 days a week to fly in their workforce.
Fort McMurray is also building something else on a massive scale. The drug problem is growing at magnitude never seen before in a single community. Big wages and long hours isolated from family and friends. Lots of stress with every project behind schedule and over budget. Darkness and extreme cold for 5 months a year. The speed at which people are becoming addicted and blowing apart is frightening. Cocaine, crack, meth, weed, alcohol are common place.
The companies at Fort McMurray are going to have to find drug rehab solutions if this wish to have a real sustainable workforce. Drug testing workers may insure safe welds in their plants and pipelines, but what about the cost to the workforce. They must start to address the stress in the workplace as well as the boomtown conditions. Teaching people to cope has to be cheaper in the long run the "stealing" workers from each other.
This is not a case study in how addictive cocaine is with people and high incomes. This is a great example of if you stress people with family disconnection, long hours, harsh weather, project delays and we all want it yesterday, that self medication through drugs becomes the answer. With all the cash going into Fort McMurray, the drug rehab programs provided by the oil companies there should and have to be state of the art. They are not. Stop arresting drug dealers. Start teaching people how to cope. Drug rehab at Fort McMurray is an exaggerated example of what is going on in the rest of North America. It is just if they cannot deal with it, looking at the cash going into those projects, there is not much hope for the rest of us.
