Closing safe drug consumption sites just a populist ploy

From time to time, the issue of supervised drug consumption sites raises its head. Almost always, healthcare people - the people who actually have to deal with the drug-takers and drug overdose issues - argue that safe drug-use sites, while not a perfect or complete solution, are nevertheless an absolutely necessary part of the solution. Politicians, specifically politicians on the right of the spectrum, are the ones calling to ban them.

The latest such news item is Doug Ford's Conservatives' plan to close supervised consumption sites within 200 metres of schools and childcare centres. This would mean that 9 of the 23 supervised drug consumption sites in Ontario would close straight away when the plan is implemented in March next year, including five in Toronto, and one each in Ottawa, Kitchener, Thunder Bay, Hamilton and Guelph. The new law would also prevent the sites that are closing from opening up again elsewhere, and to block any new ones from opening up, so you know that it is not just sites near schools they are worried about, and you know that eventually they will come after the other sites util they are all closed down.

Doug Ford blithely calls the current system a "failed policy" and "the worst thing that could ever happen to a comnunity", which is probably news to most of the hard-working individuals who have been administering it for years. Ontario's justification for their plan is partly the recent accidental shooting of a bystander near a safe-use site in Toronto in July, and partly the establishment of what they are calling Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment (HART) hubs, which they maintain is a better way to deal with the problem. 

But these HART hubs will NOT offer safe supply, supervised drug consumption, drug checking, or needle exchange programs, all of which healthcare experts say are essential to keep some drug users alive so that they can then benefit from addiction recovery treatments. They further argue that closing safe drug-use centres will lead to even more overdoses, and to more drug use and abandoned drug paraphernalia on the streets, surely not what was intended. 

Health Canada's policies are based on a whole load of Canadian and international evidence that clearly shows that "supervised consumption services help to save lives, connect people to social services, and serve as pathways to treatment". Indeed, the Ford government's own commissioned report concluded that supervised drug consumption sites should NOT be closed down, because they are "a necessary public health service, implemented to save lives and prevent accidental overdose deaths".

Ontario is following the Alberta Conservative government's similar move, based on a biased and flawed government review, and announcements by Pierre Poilievre that "when" the Conservatives come to power they will reverse the current government's support for safe consumption sites which, with Poilievre's usual gift for understatement, he repeatedly described as "drug dens". 

He also takes issue with the semantics of a journalist calling then "safe" injection sites (generally-used language, although not the official designation). "They're not safe injection sites. You just repeat the language that is fed to you by the government. You call them safe? How can they be safe?" Well, because they reduce the chances of infection from tainted or shared needles, overdoses, administering drugs contaminated with fentanyl (or worse). Safe? Let me count the ways, Pierre, and don't try and pull the wool over my eyes with snappy, over-simplistic soundbites.

So, it all seems very much an ideological stance, and not one based on the best advice from medical experts. More specifically, it can be described as a populist stance - giving a certain segment of voters what they think they want, without any regard for what is the right or best thing to do.