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- cross-posted to:
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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.
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.
I mean you don’t sound like an ally.