this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2024
40 points (97.6% liked)

Canada

7185 readers
290 users here now

What's going on Canada?

Communities

🍁 Meta

πŸ—ΊοΈ Provinces / Territories

πŸ™οΈ Cities / Local Communities

πŸ’ SportsHockey

Football (NFL)

  • List of All Teams: unknown

Football (CFL)

  • List of All Teams: unknown

Baseball

Basketball

Soccer

πŸ’» Universities

πŸ’΅ Finance / Shopping

πŸ—£οΈ Politics

🍁 Social and Culture

Rules

Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage:

https://lemmy.ca

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
40
As Canadian drug deaths rise, programs to keep users safe face backlash (www.reuters.com)
submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
16 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Years into a drug overdose crisis, Canada is facing backlash against government-sanctioned programs such as legal injection sites designed to keep users alive without curtailing drug use.

The British Columbia government has walked back a pilot project to decriminalize small quantities of illicit drugs in public places in the province. Police there also are prosecuting activists seeking to make safe drugs available.

And the man who may become Canada's next prime minister, Conservative Pierre Poilievre, has said he wants to shut down some sites where users can legally consume illicit drugs under supervision, calling them "drug dens."

The backlash reflects growing fears in Canada over the use of narcotics in public spaces, encampments where drug use is seen as common, and the specter of needles in playgrounds. Some critics of the so-called harm reduction programs see a rising number of overdose deaths in Canada as evidence that existing measures are not working.

But public health experts worry that dialing back the programs would endanger the health and lives of drug users, contributing to even more deaths.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (3 children)

The problem, at least from the perspective of people in the communities, is they're seeing people use drugs (and do all the things that people on drugs do, like theft, littering, leaving paraphenalia around, problematic behaviour, etc) anyway.

Source: personal experience. I live in a small Ontario city with a big drug problem. The SCS, while it helps with deaths due to drug use, doesn't appear help with the problems around drug use, especially for people who aren't addicts or people who care about addicts.

What they aren't understanding, is that the drug problem, as experienced by people who aren't addicts, doesn't really change as a result of safe-use sites. It stays the same, or at least get worse immediately around the area. The problem advocates have is that they don't (or won't) understand that people--and this hurts to hear--don't care if addicts die. They actually see that as a bonus: it means one less addict engaging in antisocial behaviour.

Governments really need to step up spending on the things that actually fix the problem of addiction from the perspective of people who are not addicts. This means large, comprehensive mental health facilties that are well-staffed. It means housing-first supports so they aren't using in parks. It means giving drugs away to addicts for free, so that they don't commit crimes. And--and this one hurts for advocates--it means involuntary incarceration for people who can't or won't benefit from the first three.

The problem, for governments, is that this is expensive, both monetarily and politically. It means spending a lot of money on people and buildings, which means taxes for the rich for things that benefit the poor. It means looking like jackbooted thugs when you arrest and detain people, which hurts their image among progressives, and it means giving addicts supports, housing and, honestly, free drugs, which pisses off conservatives. From the perspective of a politician, it's all-pain-no-gain. Except, y'know, solving the problem.

What does happen is that we do the cheap and easy part: decriminalization without supports (for Liberals) and tough talk without action (for Conservatives). Neither really helps much, unless you're rich, because the problems of drug addiction don't affect the rich.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The worst part is, the money is there. It's just in the hands of the top 1% and large corporations. If we taxed that group properly, we could actually finance a lot of these programs.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

We could probably finance them now and it would probably be cheaper than the current emergency services, clean up, and courts costs.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Yes, won't someone please think of the suffering people who have to be aware of addicts. It sucks that we have to pander to uneducated masses with a maimed sense of empathy to get healthcare when you belong to an unpopular class of people.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That's what politicians should be doing, and it's certainly what advocates need to do, instead of tone-policing people who could be allies.

I've spent too much time around people who are addicts who got uppity about potential allies who referred to "safe injection sites" instead of "safe-use" or "safe-consumption. Like, that doesn't help your cause, all it does is push people away. I had one particularly smarmy person say she didn't care about how much the local SCS was helping the community because it wasn't for the community.

Like, how is that attitude in any way helpful?

Getting support for programs means building consensus, and all the progress that's been made is at risk of retrenching because we're failing to address the concerns of people in the community who aren't addicts, but at affected by the fallout from addiction. We're seeing this now as programs get cancelled because, frankly, we're not doing the hard and expensive part that's needed to support everyone.

The other post above puts it really succinctly: when you've lost the support of other homeless people, you have a serious problem.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

I mean you don't sound like an ally.