Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s government has announced the closure of ten supervised drug consumption sites across the province, five of them in Toronto.
The closure affects those sites within 650 feet of schools and daycare centers.
Critics say the decision will have dire consequences and people will die.
Premier Doug Ford was quick to defend the decision.
“My heart goes out for these folks," said Ford. "But we’re there to help them. We’re not there to give them safe injection sites and all the drugs that they need."
Ford’s health minister Sylvia Jones announced the closures as she announced new rules. The ten sites selected will have to shut down by the end of next March. Jones says neighborhoods with the consumption sites, have experienced higher crime rates. She says the status quo is not working and the sites are just too big a safety risk.
Instead, the province will spend $378 million on 19 new Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment Hubs (HART Hubs).
"This opportunity for 19 HART Hubs across Ontario, to actually bring all of those experts together in those communities, whether they are experts in housing, in health, in mental health, in social services bringing those agencies in communities those experts together to make sure they can form the hubs and have that service into treatment, into recovery, is where we are focused," said Jones.
But some like Suzanne Obiorah, the executive director of Ottawa’s Somerset West Community Health Center aren’t buying it. She says the decision will have dire consequences.
"This will disproportionately affect members of our community who experience the greatest vulnerability and marginalization," said Obiorah. "This decision will not address the root cause of why people find themselves using substances. Rather it will lend itself to people using alone, using unsafely, and putting them at increased risk of harm and death."
Others say the sites provide critical services to people who use drugs and have saved countless lives in Toronto and across the province.
"This is exactly the opposite of what we’d like to see happening," said Bob Boyd, CEO of Inner City Health in Ottawa. "What we would like to see these types of services available for people outside of the downtown core as well as in the downtown core."
"People are going to die," said Sandra Ka Hon Chu, the co-executive director of the HIV Legal Network in Toronto. "We’re going to see more public drug consumption. We’re going to see people getting infected with HIV and hepatitis C at a time when rates have actually leveled off in this country. But we’re going see rates go back up cause when you don’t replace needles and syringe program. What do we have, we have treatment and hubs that can’t actually do harm reduction work.”
But Premier Ford is defending his decision and didn’t mince words when he was grilled by reporters a day after the announcement.
"This was supposed to be the greatest thing since sliced bread, said Ford. "It’s the worst thing that could happen to a community to have one of these safe injection sites in their neighborhood. The other problem I have is with the federal government. You know, safe supply. They get to go up there and get endless, endless amounts of drugs, and guess what they do, they go out and they sell it. But as far as I’m concerned the federal government’s the biggest drug dealer in the entire country. It’s unacceptable. It needs to stop."
However many health experts insist that supervised drug consumption and harm reduction both work and closing the sites will not stop people from using drugs. It will also put more pressure on police, fire, and paramedics as well as more crowded emergency rooms.