Left clings to safe injection sites as opioid deaths double

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In the five years after Ontario began opening so-called “safe” injection sites, deaths from opioid overdoses more than doubled. Crime in the areas around these sites is up considerably, be it violent crimes like assault and murder or simple theft.

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With these facts being highlighted by the Ford government as it moves to close 10 such sites across the province within 200 metres of schools and daycares, there is one refrain from the supporters of these sites – correlation doesn’t equal causation.

It’s an easy and lazy response from the smart set who told us that opening these sites would reduce overdose deaths. They simply say you can’t prove that just because overdose death doubled and crime skyrocketed near these sites that they were the cause.

In 2017, when Ontario opened the first site, the total number of opioid overdose deaths stood at 1,270. Five years later, in 2022, that figure had risen to 2,531, which was a drop from 2,858 the year before.

In areas surrounding the sites in Toronto, the government reports that assaults are up 113% and robbery up 97%. Reports of violent crime are up 195% near sites in Hamilton when compared to the rest of the city, while in Ottawa they are up 250% compared to the rest of the city.

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Dismissing these stats by yelling out that correlation doesn’t equal causation is simply willful ignorance. Let’s be clear, though, they wouldn’t want anyone studying whether there was a connection.

Now, at the same time as they say, “You can’t prove these sites helped increase deaths,” the supporters will claim that they have saved lives. How can they claim these sites saved lives when the number of opioid overdose deaths have more than doubled?

They point to people resuscitated from an overdose in these consumption sites and claim no one has ever died in such a site — which misses the point.

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Often, we know that the people saved from dying at these sites died later on. It’s not so much a life saved as a death delayed because of another fatal flaw in how these sites were operating: There was no offer of treatment.

Sure, they had treatment for the open sores that opioid addicts living on the street often develop. There was hepatitis C treatment for those who had become infected. On the main issue of treating addiction, that wasn’t happening.

“No judgment, no expectations and no desire for people to stop using drugs,” was the philosophy roundly posted on the website and printed on the flyers of Toronto’s South Riverdale Community Health Centre.

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The SRCHC is home to one of the consumption and treatment sites, CTS in government language, that will now have to shut down because it is too close to a school. Despite the official name being consumption and treatment sites and despite provincial regulations requiring that they provide a path to addiction treatment, none of that was happening.

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The widespread ethos in the industry that has built up around harm-reduction services doesn’t include a belief in offering rehab or addiction treatment as it is seen as judgmental. Which means these centres, set up with the promise of giving people a path to treatment, were just keeping them stuck in the dead-end road of opioid addiction.

They didn’t reduce deaths and in fact they doubled. They didn’t offer the treatment they were required to by law. They became magnets for drug dealers and crime.

The caring and compassionate left, the self-styled “progressives,” want to keep these sites open.

Let’s be clear, as Premier Ford and others – let’s say Alberta Premier Danielle Smith – have been talking about a treatment-based approach, the progressives have been dismissive at best. They haven’t advocated for treatment, they have instead advocated for an expansion of “safe” injection sites and “safe” supply that sees free opioid pills handed out, a program rife with problems.

When something isn’t working, you stop, re-evaluate and adjust. That’s what Premier Doug Ford and his team have done in moving Ontario toward a treatment hub model.

That’s the path toward giving people hope and letting them get their lives back again rather than staying on the path of addiction and despair.

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