Toronto votes for safe injection sites

Toronto City Council has taken what seems like a very grown up step this week (at least a damned sight more grown up than its ridiculous decision to spend $3.2 billion adding a single stop to its subway system in Scarborough, but don't get me started on that...) by voting to establish three supervised injection sites for drug users.

The issue is a contentious one, and I have always found it somewhat counterintuitive and difficult to justify. But apparently safe injection sites work - they prevent overdoses, reduce the transmission of disease, and keep needles and other drug paraphernalia out of parks and backyards where they can do even more damage and generally lower the tone of the neighbourhood. Wiser heads than mine, as well as evidence from 90 such sites in other cities and countries, seem convinced of their value, so I am happy to go along with the idea.

What particularly struck me about Toronto's vote was three things:

• the almost unanimity of the vote (36-3) in a council that seems hopelessly split on so many other issues;
• the uncharacteristically civilized and rational debate that led up to it (which I think is at least partly attributable to the sensible, fact-based presentations of the city's medical officer of health, David McKeown); and
• the almost complete absence of the usual not-in-my-back-yard attitudes that councillors tend to exhibit (and which to some extent their constituencies require of them).

I confess I don't know enough about the practicalities of safe injection sites (or about substance abuse in general for that matter), but I have often wondered whether they can't also, in some way, help wean drug users off their addictions. For example, if individuals are tracked in their attendance and usage at safe injection sites, could administrators not very gradually reduce the dosage administered, or water it down or something? Or is that impinging of the users' civil liberties or something? I can see that safe injection sites reduce overall harm in some ways, but can they not be used to do more?