We 100 percent need something better. I understand that addiction is a disease, and it shouldn’t be prosecuted. However instead of providing them with needles and pipes, why don’t we mandate rehab, or other treatments instead of encouraging this behaviour. I live near a safe injection site, and go to school near one and it’s just pure filth, degeneracy, and danger. They harm women, harm children, scream all the time it’s just terrible. I understand the war on drugs has had detrimental effects on society, however we’ve swung way too far in the other direction. The government shouldn’t encourage addiction to harmful substances like fentanyl heroin or crack by providing them with needles and pipes, and we should instead fund treatment centres, or sentence non violent offenders to rehabilitation. I understand that it’s also to stop spreading diseases, but I truly hate safe injection sites, and hope they all close down.
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they were supposed to be implemented alongside mental health help to get to the root of the problem.
issue is, most places stopped right at phase one. now we have people with easier access to drugs but at least it’s safer than using dirty needles
Providing the resources to do it safely is not encouraging it. The goal is to prevent people from dying from unsafe equipment and supplies. Treatment centers won’t save dead people.
If you make someone suddenly cut substances out, they could flat out die. Their body wont be able to function without those drugs and so a safe consumption site is a place where addicts can get their fix while being safe and monitored so that they dont harm others.
You see it as enabling their addiction but really it is letting them indulge in their addiction in an environment where they arent hurting others or putting others at risk. Usually it will come along with things like rehab or other treatments.
So you think taking away the safe injection site will clean up the area and all the behaviour will disappear? What you’re basically saying is you just don’t want it visible enough to ruin your day. I agree people need more help, however these places do offer rehab but the fact is you can’t force them and the addiction will exist with or without the site. At least they have access to clean needles and help is there should they decide to take it.
Most addicts never want to stop and why would they? If using makes you happy go for it. As one of my friends used to say “A life without drugs isn’t a life worth living.”
Why do you worry what others are doing, unless you have a better solution?
Safe injection sites aren’t necessarily encouraging the behavior, the people who use them would be using drugs regardless of whether or not they have a safe injection site available to them. To put it another way, if meth became legal tomorrow, most people wouldn’t rush to start using meth. Obviously I can’t speak to your anecdotal experience, if the things you’re saying are happening are indeed happening that is unfortunate.
Generally speaking, safe injection sites help to control the spread of std’s by supplying clean needles, offer live-saving interventions in the event of overdose, and a lot of them offer the people who use them the resources they need to get started with rehab if they want it. They may have their problems, but it sure beats the hell out of arresting people for being addicts.
Not sure if it’s unpopular but I personally disagree very much. Whether or not they are provided clean needles and pipes, they will use. If they already have the drug itself especially. You say encourage, and I just don’t think it’s encouragement.
I one thousand percent agree that rehab needs to be made accessible and also very much regulated because there are lots of scams out there. But let’s be real, rehab is incredibly expensive and when mandated, kind of just another form of jail. For people to get clean they have to want to to, for the most part.
It looks ugly, it’s uncomfortable, but and there are certainly safety concerns with gathering people on drugs together. But I gotta ask you: where do you think people are gonna go if those places are all closed down? Dispersed throughout the community, likely contracting disease from dirty needles and spreading that disease.
You are revolted by drug addiction which I understand, but forcing people into more and more dangerous situations is not the right next step, in my opinion.
It’s a very hard but realistic conversation that needs to be had. At one hand, I agree. At the other, I feel there needs to be a better response to such a delicate situation.
The one hand. We need research driven, humane, and effective rehabilitation. Nothing cult-like, or profit driven.
On the other hand… I understand some people are so far gone in addiction that there’s no coming back.
Speaking as someone who used to be a drug addict and had to sweat it out to become prosperous, it’s hard. I’ve seen both sides.
Enforced rehab could be helpful if rehab was actually worth its title. But right now, it’s not. Methadone clinics are bullshit. The 12 step programs are stupid and cult like. The best I’ve seen are the clinics that allow labor in a safe manner…. such as repairing hiking trails. You learn about nature, there’s nowhere to run, and there’s hard work that feels worth it.
For anyone who wants to tell me that sweaty work isn’t OK, try to be on the wrong side of the tracks for a while. It works way better than methadone. Which is pretty much government funded heroin. Even more addictive in my opinion.
I was extremely lucky to find the right path. The harder issue is how to properly enforce that to those who can be rehabbed…and what to do for those who cannot be rehabbed.
I’m so sorry this happened to you.
I used to live in a 2 block radius to 4 of them. Since they took them out, things have gotten really bad.
The drug problem is the same, but now they are smoking crack and injecting heroin on the sidewalks. Now they have no place to go, and they are homeless so they camp out and defecate everywhere. They litter everywhere.
Originally I thought, maybe we need to open a public washroom, and have more garbage cans. Then I realized, for the amount we spend feeding them, giving them public washrooms, cleaning up after them, building hostile architecture, implementing more security, clothes in cold winter etc it would be cheaper just to house them and no I’m not talking about everyone getting their own house.
I feel bad. I wish there was something I could do. I wish they had someplace to go. I feel less safe.
I understand not wanting to condone or enable addiction. It’s just no rehab will take someone who hasn’t dealt with their mental health issues. (I’m not talking about depression , but like schizophrenia or bipolar.)
Also no mental hospital will take someone with a drug addiction.
Also you can’t even deal with your mental health until you have your basic needs met.
I’m not sure what the answer is. But I believe we used to lock people up in the 50s, and that seemed to work ok. Now we have better mental health systems in place, so they wouldn’t be subject to torture.
I have been back and forth on commenting…as someone that been “between homes” I can’t understand how much garbage is left by people in tent communities. And there is zero reason to be dealing/using drugs. You can have a “safe site”, but it’s not really that safe.
Banned. Can’t talk about addiction
As a former addict, people who are going to do that are going to do it regardless. The point of those places is to make sure those people don’t OD or contract HIV or hepatitis before they can get clean.
Addiction has two possible outcomes: recovery or death.
This just prevents the second until they can do the first on their own.
If your loved one was homeless and addicted you would want them to have safe access to drugs and needles. Would you rather them contract a life threatening disease and spread it around or die from an overdose? These are mentally ill people who can’t care for themselves anymore.
We have done all the things that you are suggesting in the past in various states and it doesn’t help. The truth about addiction is that you won’t quit unless you want to quit even if it is mandated. I currently live in a state with mandated inpatient rehab for first time offenders, mandated drug testing for offenders on probation, and a mandatory 1 year sentence for second time offenders. When my youngest brother was sentenced to one year incarceration my family celebrated … finally he would be in a place where he couldn’t get meth. Instead he got HIV and then overdosed while incarcerated. Honestly I wish we had safe consumption sites in my state. I get that my brother could be loud, violent, and a nuisance to the public when he was high but maybe he would still be alive.
People are going to get high whether or not there are safe use sites.
As someone who has never been an addict, but has been friends and family with many who have, I wish there were more safe use sites providing clean paraphernalia and clean drugs.
I wish some of my friends had a place like that, instead of dying in a dirty motel with dirty drugs. Maybe they would have stayed alive long enough to finally get clean, and be here to raise their children that some of them left behind.
The war on drugs has been a failure, and we have to do something different to get different results and actually help these people save themselves.
People are gonna do it no matter what, so harm reduction is extremely important
I’d be willing to bet my life that not a single person has ever gone into one of these sites as a non-addict and then walked out as an addict. The government isn’t encouraging addiction by keeping addicts from dying, it’s trying to keep the addicts alive long enough that they ideally decide to quit.
The government doesn’t supply drugs, it only protects those who bring their own. The only way in which these sites increase the amount of drug consumption happening is by keeping drug consumers alive to consume more rather than just letting them die. If you think that’s a problem, you’re a bad person.
This is a very popular opinion.
You’re not gonna “cure” addicts. The best case scenario is that you can HELP addicts. Help them by providing them with a slightly better high – that’s why we give methadone instead of heroin –, help them with a better environment to shoot up than the absolute street, help them by – at the very worst – shove them towards doctors, not jailers.
Someone else said it better, addicts can only do two things: get out, or die. While we all hope they get better, the least we can do is make sure they do either in the safest environment possible.
I can understand that living next to a SI site can be intense, think about that it’d be worse if these places didn’t exist.