Some politicians are expressing concern about public safety and demanding more consultation after Toronto’s medical officer of health recommended the city move ahead with three supervised drug injection sites.
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Conservative health critic Dr. Kellie Leitch is among the critics.
At an unrelated news conference Monday, Mayor John Tory said he hopes a debate over supervised injection sites will be “rational” and avoid “emotional” arguments.
Hugh Lampkin, a former drug user who is now president of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, spoke of the importance of having counselling and addiction services connected to the site. Brash conservative Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti told VICE News he will fight the safe injection sites “tooth and nail” and thinks the service should only be done in “hospital settings”, rather than in clinics open to the public.
“You can’t do it in strip plazas, and you can’t do it with commerce”, he said, adding that “there’s no way that a community economically will ever bounce back from the devastation that drugs bring”.
At the moment, there are only two safe-injection sites in Canada – both in Vancouver. They typically also provide sterile injection equipment. “They’ll do anything for a shot of heroin, and so do we really want them lingering the streets in between their hits?”
“We’re just working on finalizing what a model would look like in Edmonton that meets the needs of people who inject drugs as well as the community”.
McKeown’s report notes that, in 2013, 206 people died from drug overdoses in Toronto, up 41 percent from 2004.
Joe Cressy, a city councillor and chair of the city’s drug strategy implementation panel, said he doesn’t think that will be a problem.
The sites allow people to take illicitly-obtained drugs while supervised by nurses, in order to prevent overdoses.
The federal Liberals have been generally supportive.
“If someone is injecting under the supervision of a nurse, they’re not injecting in a park or a stairwell and they’re not leaving their dirty needles in parks and playgrounds”, he said.
Final approval for safe-injection sites rests with the federal government, which must grant an exemption under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. According to Toronto Health, these three locations are already have the busiest needle distribution programs, accounting for about 75 per cent of all needles distributed in Toronto.
Toronto Public Health (The Works), Queen West-Central Toronto Community Health Centre, and South Riverdale Community Health Centre are planning to add small-scale supervised injection services to their existing clinical health services for people who inject drugs.
Cressy said these supervised injection sites increase public safety by taking the needles and drug use off the streets, out of “laneways and coffee shops” and “into a safe environment”.
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The report lists the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway and Australia as other countries where injection sites are operating. “This is a hard issue, and it is important that we listen to the experts, review the facts, and hear the views of local communities during the public consultation process”, Tory said.
