Pubdate: Sun, 21 Jul 2013
Source: Toronto Sun (CN ON)
Copyright: 2013 Canoe Limited Partnership
Contact:  http://torontosun.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/457

NO TO DRUG INJECTION SITES IN TORONTO

The Toronto Board of Health's recent proposal for a legal injection
site for drug addicts is a bad idea.

It was also a bad idea last year, when a report by St. Michael's
Hospital and the University of Toronto recommended three drug
injection sites for Toronto.

Such facilities would require the approval of Ottawa and Queen's Park,
neither of which support them, nor does Mayor Rob Ford or the Toronto
police.

They're right, and many of the reasons why can be found, ironically,
in the report put out by St. Michael's Hospital and U of T in 2012,
arguing for multiple injection sites in the city.

Toronto already runs needle exchange and methadone programs for drug
addicts and there's little evidence a supervised injection site would
be an effective addition to that.

The 2012 study found injection drug use in Toronto, unlike Vancouver
and Ottawa, is spread out across the city, as opposed to being
concentrated in a few neighborhoods, so one or even three facilities
would be unlikely to draw many addicts.

When the researchers questioned addicts, they found most had little or
no interest in accessing medical or social services through drug
injection sites.

Mainly, they just wanted to have a place where they could inject drugs
without being arrested.

In other words, an injection site would not fulfill the public's
primary expectation for funding such a facility - helping addicts to
get off drugs.

All it would do is make it easier for them to stay addicted to
drugs.

Advocates of legal drug injection sites claim a primary purpose of
such facilities is to reduce infection rates for HIV.

But the 2012 study found, "Toronto ... has relatively low HIV
prevalence rates among people who inject drugs" and the projected
number of averted HIV infections would be only two to three per site
per year, at a cost of millions of tax dollars.

What if someone dies of an overdose or contaminated drugs at such a
facility, always a possibility even if they're supervised? Who'll be
liable for that, taxpayers?

No matter where the city tries to put a legal injection site - even if
it could get permission from Ottawa and Queen's Park - it will be
fiercely opposed by local residents, meaning years of delays and
escalating costs.

Public funding related to drug addiction is better spent on programs
to help addicts get off drugs.

There aren't enough of those and that's one reason why it's so
frustrating when Ottawa and Queen's Park waste billions of our tax
dollars in financial scandals that could have been invested in such
treatment programs.

In any event, it's one thing to help addicts get off drugs if they're
willing to try.

But simply giving them a place to inject them while society looks the
other way, is nothing more than an admission of defeat.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Matt