Defunding & closing safe consumption sites in Ontario is extreme cruelty that could happen here

The closure of safe consumption sites in Ontario – or anywhere during our crisis – will ensure that preventable deaths from the toxic drug supply continue. The closure will also be extraordinarily costly to the public, and will create new burdens on the healthcare system. 

From Surrey, we watch as the Ontario government attempts to shut down supervised consumption sites, and we know it could happen here next if we do not resist these closures together.

Our emergency deserves a response.

How is closing down services a response to an emergency? 

We need to scale up, not down. We are still dying.  

We have lost many friends, family and community members to the crisis, and are wary of the ripple effects of every single death. 

Each person we lose to overdose comes with unanswered questions, and with immeasurable grief. 

The toxic drug crisis has had a way farther reach and impact than we can even describe – it outsizes other pandemics that we have experienced, such as COVID-19 – but does not get the same response. 

Our crisis rarely receives public health or other emergency orders, and when we do, they are hardly followed. 

Proven supply interventions already exist in many other domains – for example, when romaine lettuce is tainted – we do not expect every person’s behaviour to change, we know we have to address the supply to reduce the harm. If legal alcohol had killed 15,000 people in eight years, it would be an issue and it would be addressed. 

But illicit drug users, who make up approximately five per cent of the adult population in BC, are treated as second class citizens. We are losing more than six people per day from a formal government, public health emergency.

Safe consumption sites are welcoming to people who are often excluded in other healthcare settings. Many of us have experienced dehumanization and exclusion in other traditional healthcare settings and hospitals. 

For many of us, safe consumption and overdose prevention sites are the only service we would access, and where we feel safe and welcomed.

There is no argument to be made that safe consumption sites are not a proven intervention – they are proven to be beneficial. The studies and statistics have been collected and completed, and in the face of people dying, this is a dangerous political decision.

We also call on physicians and other healthcare workers to follow the leadership of drug user rights groups and coalitions in Ontario and across Canada working to stop these closures. 

We challenge Doug Ford and his Progressive Conservative party to adhere to the demands around an audit, and we question the secrecy and the fast-tracking of this bill - what are you hiding? 

Progressive Conservatives have basically said: Merry Christmas, go consume drugs behind a dumpster – during the time of year when stress is already the highest.

Keep safe consumption sites open!