Advocates in Thunder Bay say the Ontario government’s move to close a number of safe consumption sites (SCS) will be detrimental to people living with addictions.
Health Minister Sylvia Jones announced Tuesday the province is banning the sites within 200 metres of schools and child-care centres, meaning 10 locations in the province, including Path 525 in Thunder Bay, must shut down by March 31, 2025.
Path 525, which is operated by NorWest Community Health Centres (NWCHC), is on the city’s south side, around the corner from Ogden Community Public School.
Opened in 2018, the service’s clients can bring in drugs from the street to use in the presence of a registered nurse, who can help them if they overdose.
Junkies will either shoot up at a safe drug consumption site next to a school, or they will do so alone, leaning against the schoolyard fence, and discarding their HBV infected needles all over the school yard, grassy areas and parking lots.
Denying them help does not make them go away magically. And I speak from experience, when I was a kid in school, junkies would hide behind our school to shoot up at night to not get caught, and it was up to the school administration to pick up the sharps and other paraphernalia.
I’d much rather they be given clean needles, a safe injection site, supervision, a sharps container and help to beat their addiction. Making them suffer just because you don’t like them makes them become a problem for everyone.
Calls me an idiot then says idiot stuff in the first paragraph.
Thankfully I’ll never have to see your angry ignorance again.
No. They didn’t. (Other than the needlessly obvious insult.)
Fair enough, the insult wasn’t constructive.