The Liberals Will Never Undo the Drug Use Damage They've Done

It's not like they have to wade through wasted people covered in their own vomit: 

When Mark Carney was asked on the campaign trail about whether federal approval for injection sites would continue under his government, he avoided the contentious topic by saying the effectiveness of those sites was under review. 

Even in his evasion, our new prime minister was undermining the position staked out by his predecessor, Justin Trudeau. When asked about such controversial initiatives as injection sites and the distribution of so-called “safer supply” opioids to those with severe addictions, the latter was fond of insisting his government was simply “following the science.” 

If science had decided injection sites were wildly successful and necessary, then why does Carney’s government need to study them? … 

In a report written by the provincially appointed supervisor of Toronto’s South Riverdale injection site, outside of which a mother of two young girls was killed during a gun fight in 2023 between drug dealers who’d been commuting to the site from the suburb of Scarborough for months, the endless waves of client (and staff) overdose deaths is raised repeatedly. It was such a frequent occurrence that staff morale suffered intensely. 

The lawyers representing Ontario in the charter challenge litigation presented a platoon of expert witnesses to successfully establish that the science around injection sites is far from settled. The 2022 Stanford-Lancet Commission on the North American Opioid Crisis states “there is no evidence that accessing a site lowers an individual’s risk of fatal overdose over time.” 

Earlier this year, research was unveiled that showed nearly a third of those who died from an overdose in Ontario between 2018 and 2022 had been in hospital in-patient wards or emergency rooms within a week of their deaths. If hospitals are failing to connect that many vulnerable drug users to necessary care, it’s safe to assume injection sites aren’t faring any better. 

According to the minutes for a meeting of Ottawa’s Byward Market Balanced Community Task Force in February, Rob Boyd, the CEO of the injection site operated by Ottawa Inner City Health, The Trailer, admitted that its clients “are routinely screened out of access” to treatment. 

Boyd said this is because they lack the “social capital” — housing and employment, for example — to “support treatment success” and will almost certainly relapse when they “return to the environment driving the substance use.” Boyd called treatment for these clients “a waste of money” until social capital can be built up, a piece of the equation Carney might want to study next. 

The team of pro-bono lawyers representing Toronto’s Kensington site in the charter challenge, during their day-long submissions in court on March 24, spent considerable time talking about how injection sites “save lives.” Not surprisingly, their focus on the needs of drug users was so singular that it took five hours of submissions before one of the site’s lawyers uttered the words “drug dealers,” a group without which injection sites would not exist.

 In the 2012 feasibility study that led to injection sites opening in Toronto and Ottawa five years later, its author, Dr. Ahmed Bayoumi, an expert witness for the Kensington site, reported that “many” drug users disclosed in interviews that they would not use an injection site if it meant they had to walk more than a few minutes after obtaining their drugs. 

Which means that for sites to be effective, drug dealers need to be operating within a few blocks of them. In the case of the South Riverdale site, this means encouraging drug dealers to be selling outside a site that’s within 150 metres of two elementary schools and six daycare facilities. (Note for Mr. Carney: drug dealing and open use have virtually disappeared around the South Riverdale site, which I live across the street from, since it closed on March 21.) 

Dr. Jerry Ratcliffe, an expert witness in the spatial dynamics of crime for the province, said injection sites cause “microlevel” concentrations of crime and disorder. Ratcliffe cited a recent study of injection sites in Toronto that shows increases in assaults (61 per cent), robberies (62 per cent) and break and enters (47 per cent) within 100 metres following “sites’ implementation.” 

While these increases levelled out over five years (as non-criminal mayhem exploded), Ratcliffe said the study “does not explore the wealth of other possibilities” that could explain why the initial crime spike slowly subsided, including the fact that police are discouraged from having a presence around injection sites and the Toronto police force’s de facto decriminalization policies that came into effect during those years (a policy that could have also contributed to reporting fatigue). 

The court record contains dozens of detailed accounts (one being from me) of disorder within 200 metres of injection sites that often include a bounty of photographic evidence. A number of these affiants are from Sandy Hill. 

In late February, a local community organization called Action Sandy Hill sent a 10-page letter to Health Canada’s Controlled Substances Directorate, formally withdrawing its support for the community’s injection site. The letter calls the Sandy Hill injection site’s impact on the community “catastrophic.” The consequences of the social disorder and crime around the site “have surpassed what we could even imagine when (our) 2016 letter (of conditional support before the site opened) was written.”