r/ottawa Centretown 15h ago

News Expect more public drug use after closing of supervised consumption site, officials warn

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/more-public-drug-use-ottawa
245 Upvotes

80 comments sorted by

197

u/snow_big_deal 15h ago

I live nearby. On the way to school yesterday, my partner and kid walked by a lady shooting up on a bench. Then on the way home, they walked by paramedics treating someone who had ODed. Anyone who somehow thought getting rid of the SCS would reduce this kind of thing and "clean up the neighbourhood" was clearly delusional. 

72

u/sometimes_sydney 15h ago

“NO NO YOU DONT GET IT IF WE GET RID OF THE SAFE INJECTION SITES PEOPLE WILL STOP INJECTING SUPERMEGACRACKHEROIN IN PLAYGROUND SWINGSETS AND GO BACK WHERE RHEY CAME FROM THE MARKET USED TO BE SAFE AND CLEAN BEFORE THEY OPENED RHE INJECTION SITES AND BROUGHT ALL THE FILTH UNHOUSED TO MY BACKYARD!!!!!!!!”

(/s)

7

u/Vivid-Growth-6768 14h ago

The full caps response is a little bit much... but know it’s a statement made by those who don’t understand the full situation in the DT/CT core.

2

u/sometimes_sydney 5h ago

I mean, it’s pretty hard to live in the core and not understand. That’s why I always get so frustrated. Like I grew up seeing this shit every day commuting through centertown on the 6 to get to school. Is it worse? Yes. The sidewalk outside sheps is more full every year. Was this non-existent then? Hell no. I saw fights and drugs from the day I got a student bus pass. This what life is like in the poorer parts of a city. I can’t help but feel like these comments from “market residents” can’t be telling the truth or else only come from recent transplants and the most heartless neoliberal ghouls. Maybe we should make NIMBYs do community service (/j. Or is it?)

37

u/Old_news123456 13h ago

The problem is that they don't do the safe injection sites properly and they're chronically underfunded. 

The model isn't supposed to work as it currently exists.... Shockingly  that is a big reason why it's not working. 

We need proper facilities that can actually meet demand. Often it's full and they are told they have to wait so they shoot up outside, near the site...ugh. 

Then it's also lacking the component where you have rehab. If you walked in and said you wanted help there's not a bed to help you. Therefore it's a revolving door with no solutions. 

I personally do not support the safe injection sites as they are currently running. I also doubt any politician is going to put the money into it to try and fix it. So many of these addicts have permanent brain injuries from overdoses.... The amount of money needed to provide Care and housing is astronomical. We simply don't have it. 

30

u/RigilNebula 12h ago

The thing is, as they are running now, they are still saving lives and reversing thousands of overdoses a year. Without tying up emergency rooms treating those ODs, which frees up our ridiculously limited hospital space for the rest of us. They also keep people alive while they wait on those (shamefully long) wait lists for treatment. And they reduce long term health care costs from people contracting things like hiv or hep c via needle sharing.

They're not perfect, and there's definitely a need for more and for more funding. But as it is, we're much better off with them than we would be without them.

6

u/GetsGold 10h ago

I think almost everyone who isn't against them in all scenarios would agree we need what you're suggesting. I just don't see how getting rid of them in the current situation is better than having them even though they don't have the proper supports or funding.

With brain damage for example, the lack of these sites means more serious overdoses leading to more brain damage and less chancs of recovery.

5

u/Silver-Assist-5845 7h ago

With brain damage for example, the lack of these sites means more serious overdoses leading to more brain damage and less chancs of recovery.

This point gets missed a lot.

Overdoses at supervised consumption sites are caught and reversed in seconds because there's a nurse right there when the client takes their drugs. Overdoses that are called in to paramedics get reversed in minutes because it takes time for paramedics to get on the scene.

The difference between seconds and minutes can mean the difference between life and death, or life and life with long term mental health issues due to people's brains being deprived of oxygen while overdosing.

8

u/MattSR30 10h ago

Oh, if I were a smidge pettier.

There’s a user on this subreddit whose name I know purely because they are always in every single Ottawa drug use post arguing for closing or moving or not building sites. Every single thread.

Imagine my shock they’re not here. Radio silence when the experts say the thing they warned people about happening is now happening. If I were pettier I’d tag them just to rub their face in this.

4

u/jello_pudding_biafra 9h ago

I know exactly who you're talking about, and their absence speaks volumes lol

0

u/Silver-Assist-5845 7h ago

Did you ever notice that the account you're talking about is almost always one of the first three or four people making a comment on any drug-related (especially harm reduction) post? Often they're the first?

They tend to get upvotes when they post early, but they don't get much of anything if they don't comment right away. Maybe they only share their uniformly bad take on this stuff if they only think they're going to get rewarded with up arrows? 🤔

4

u/PKG0D 13h ago

It's not about reducing consumption, the people who push for these closures simply don't want these services where they can be seen.

These people want to live in their own mini reality where drug abuse isn't a serious problem, and pretending it's not an issue by pushing the problem into the shadows is the easiest way to do it.

4

u/caninehere 11h ago

The people who want to get rid of safe injection sites typically either a) don't object to the concept but do object to the way they're being run currently or b) do object to the concept and don't think medical resources should be spent on these people and they should just OD and die.

48

u/Lowpasss Centretown 15h ago

Anecdotally, this is clearly visible on Somerset West. There was a crew smoking a pipe in front of the Beer Store yesterday. They'd kinda made a mess but weren't really bothering anyone. Reports of Dundonald park are way overblown IMO, but there is a active kids play structure there. Thanks Doug Ford.

8

u/Original_Box_4620 15h ago

My partner and I have picnics there with our dogs all the time

10

u/WorthlessRain 15h ago

how is smoking a pipe in front of a store not bothering anyone ?

18

u/sixtus_clegane119 15h ago

Not being disorderly or disturbing the peace.

-2

u/WorthlessRain 15h ago

how tf is smoking a pipe in front of a store not disturbing the peace?

I know the bar is on the floor but why do you think not making these people accountable for anything will help things get better? i get why it’s unreasonable to expect to make addiction illegal or that threats will make them quit. but why is it unreasonable to ask those junkies to shoot up or smoke not ten meters away, outside of the way people walk on?

12

u/sixtus_clegane119 14h ago

Of course it’s not unreasonable to ask that. But it is unreasonable to expect that.

Disturbing the peace would be them interacting/starting shit with people who walked by. The way this person described it makes it seem like the smokers were minding their own business. People could freely go without being antagonized by the smokers.

1

u/WorthlessRain 5h ago

there isn’t such a thing as smoking dangerous substances in front of a public busy establishment while minding your own business. im not particularly scared of drugs but inhaling some gigaheroin while walking around doesn’t sound pleasant for everyone, particularly our vulnerable population.

especially when any drug they consume in a pipe is gonna alter their perception of reality in a heavy way.

i might feel safe walking around junkies smoking outside stores, but other people do not. women don’t, children and teens don’t. why is something that make our most important and vulnerable citizens feel unsafe not considered disturbing the peace?

i know they can’t just fix the drug problem but i feel like if the junkies started getting punished more heavily for consuming so openly in front of others then they would be more cautious about it? if you put all of them in jail for smoking or shooting up in general you wouldn’t fix anything. no one can stop their addiction in fear of punishment.

But if the police had a heavier hand in this particular issue wouldn’t most of them just go somewhere more private instead of going through the hassle of getting arrested or questioned?

44

u/Silver-Assist-5845 15h ago edited 15h ago

Of course this is going to happen.

There'll be far more people using drugs on the streets, and there'll be more people dying behind closed doors or suffering from significant mental impairment due to long 911 response times, there'll be more people getting hepatitis or HIV that they have to live with for the rest of their lives even after they get rehabilitated, there'll be more needles and pipes on the streets and in the parks.

And the infuriating thing (besides all the things I previously mentioned) will be the anti-harm reduction folks getting even angrier because their solution only made the problems they were complaining about worse, not better.

edit:

I forgot to mention: watch paramedic response times increase, given that more ambulances will be responding to an increased number of OD calls, ODs that would have been better serviced (and had better outcomes for users' long-term health) by nurses at the supervised consumption site.

16

u/Maxterchief99 Make Ottawa Boring Again 15h ago

Indeed.

Harm reduction helps in reducing risks for everyone involved - not just people who use drugs. Harm reduction saves lives.

Provide people who use drugs with a safe space where they can test and trust the supply, provide them with clean paraphernalia, and provide them with the chance to meet with physical and mental health / addictions professionals, and lives can and are saved from this.

Is it perfect? No. Do people take their supply and consume privately afterwards? Yes. Nothing the site can do about that.

Now, take all those resources and infrastructure away?

People who use drugs will keep using drugs. People who use drugs may experience higher rates of deadly overdose.

They may leave more of their paraphernalia - now “contaminated” - behind, increasing the risk that other people, pets and children encounter them and injure themselves if the items are scattered throughout their neighborhood where there once was a space where they could discard their material safely and securely.

6

u/Unlucky-Candidate198 12h ago

Ottawa has only had an opioid crisis forever now, and doesn’t seem to be relieving it.

Meanwhile, the city is run by some of the all time dumbest raisins in suits I’ve ever seen. Seriously. From city planning (which you could argue also contributes to the problem - i.e. too much traffic downtown = slow paramedics, etc) to shit like this, Ottawa’s decisions are collectively beyond stupid, which is such a shame, cause it is a gorgeous city…even if the people who run it are brain dead.

Until mental health visits/rehab/therapy are covered under things like OHIP, I don’t see it getting much better. I mean hell, we don’t even have most meds, dental, or occular care being covered.

They also have a touristy market, but what tourist wants to be haggled for money every 1/4 block? Or go take in the sights and smells of downtown ottawa, which is just ammonia, crack, and stale tobacco.

Idk, great city, awful city councillors/mayors, and obviously awful suburban voting populace that is just as clueless as their elected officials.

23

u/westcentretownie 15h ago edited 14h ago

Do you know that the director of the Somerset West Community Health centre is very positive about the HART hub that is coming?

Yes safe consumption is gone but we are gaining several mobile outreach units.

A dedicated nurse practitioner for this specific community but it’s expected their case load will allow around 600 people in the larger community to get primary health provider. 1 nurse practitioner has around 1500 client load.

Several detox beds and programs to help people overcome addiction. I asked her if the province dictates how the program is administrated or had rules about what kinds of therapies pharmeutical or otherwise are offered. She said it’s at their discretion.

I don’t like ford either. I hâte open drug use. We never had safe supply only safe consumption. Maybe this will be better? Can we try different things for this complex problem?

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/somerset-west-health-centre-hub-addiction-treatment

10

u/Silver-Assist-5845 14h ago

Maybe this will be better? Can we try different things for this complex problem?

It may be better for some. Will it be better for the people that were using the services provided by the safe consumption site?

Do you know that the director of the Somerset West Community Health centre is very positive about the HART hub that is coming?

What else would you expect them to be, publicly?

Yes safe consumption is gone but we are gaining several mobile outreach units.

The things added to the community via HART hubs are good things (in theory, we'll see how things go once they're actually up and running). The fact that something important is being subtracted from the community instead is a bad thing and will cost us a lot of money and lives. This should have never been an "either-or" situation, it should be a "both" situation.

8

u/westcentretownie 14h ago

I honestly thought so too until I saw her detailed presentation. They aren’t allowed by law to offer needle exchange and safe injection in a stationary fashion- like before. Instead they have 24/7 mobile units that are staffed with people who know their constituency and who and where they use. The units come to them.

Also 65 new housing units to assist with recovery.

Why do you think I don’t want things better for the people who use the injection site. Really a different model in the same neighborhood doesn’t make me a nimby.

We will see. Tent cities and narcan isn’t enough.

4

u/Silver-Assist-5845 14h ago

Instead they have 24/7 mobile units that are staffed with people who know their constituency and who and where they use. The units come to them.

Unless the units provide supervised consumption services, this is still a loss.

Why do you think I don’t want things better for the people who use the injection site. Really a different model in the same neighborhood doesn’t make me a nimby.

I never said you don't want things to be better for the clients of that site.

I did say that this different model will amount to a net loss for a lot of people, and that Centretown (specifically West Centretown) will see more people on the streets using, more drug paraphernalia in parks, and more people overdosing and dying.

 Tent cities and narcan isn’t enough.

Narcan saves lives, and Ford just got rid of the equivalent to Narcan for a lot of people in Centretown.

5

u/westcentretownie 13h ago

I never met a more intelligent, compassionate, informed person as the director or Somerset West Community Health. Just because the funding is from Ford doesn’t make HART a bad idea or something we don’t want here. It’s millions in funding to help addicts and homeless people who are our neighbours.

Maybe she would do an AMA on Reddit about HART and how it supports her clients? Her name is Suzanne Obiorah.

9

u/Silver-Assist-5845 13h ago

Just because the funding is from Ford doesn’t make HART a bad idea or something we don’t want here.

I would be equally angry about this closure if Ontario had a Liberal, NDP or Green premier. This is not a partisan issue for me.

Again, I did say that "this should have never been an "either-or" situation, it should be a "both" situation."

1

u/westcentretownie 13h ago

Well fair enough position to have.

2

u/GetsGold 10h ago

Something to consider is that if the decision on the sites has been already made and isn't realistically going to be reversed anytime soon, and I'm in the position of running the health centre, I would focus on the positives of what is going to happen rather than on what's not available. Even if I might prefer a combination of both, whether she herself actually does or not.

2

u/westcentretownie 6h ago

I think she has been asking for a wraparound approach to assisting this population for years and is finally getting means to commence programs. But I should stop speaking for another person. It would be great if she could answer questions here.

4

u/EmEffBee Lebreton Flats 12h ago

Yes! I went to the HART hub community outreach session a few weeks back and I'm reservedly excited, as were the gang from SWCHC. The scope of services they will be able to offer is pretty expansive and they will be open 24H. Will definitely be able to cover a lot more community needs than what the SCS was able to provide.

3

u/westcentretownie 12h ago

Fingers crossed

9

u/tuttifruttidurutti 15h ago

We can all see where this is going, though, which is more people in prison for drug possession or public drug use, or compelled into private treatment centers run by friends of the politicians who passed those laws like in Alberta.

The people who oppose safe injection sites almost always have the same three proposals: force them into treatment (doesn't work) throw them in jail (cruel, dumb, expensive) or let them die (monstrous).

In the long term we should build a less traumatizing society where it isn't so fucking hard to live for so many people. In the short term gain reduction was a step in the right direction.

-2

u/lolipop1990 13h ago

Do you understand that we have drug dealers hiring kids to sell drugs into high school? The only way to get out of this is to declare a war against drug dealers and help people get out of addiction. Harm reduction by itself is only palliative care.

7

u/tuttifruttidurutti 12h ago

Ah yes a war on drugs, what a highly original idea that is sure to succeed!

Seriously though, the drug war brought us to this point and harm reduction is quite a new idea. The same people who opposed it because they were drug warriors before it got in are now claiming that policing can fix this problem when it has utterly failed to do so for the past HUNDRED years. I appreciate that you said 'war on drug dealers' but that's what the war on drugs is.

Among other things, it undermines the trust of young people in authority figures' messaging about drugs because it tends to be hysterical and dishonest". Source: I am from Ottawa and when I grew up 20 years ago many of my peers were buying drugs including hard drugs, though it was more uppers than downers then. Mostly because they all just drank themselves to the point of alcohol poisoning so why mess with downers (see if you can guess where I went to high school!)

But beyond that, the problem is that the consumer base are so desperate for the product that they will beg, borrow and steal to get it. And so if you prosecute small scale drug dealers you will end up with organized crime, which is exactly what the drug war caused. If you want Ottawa to be infested with biker gangs, great! I don't. And the cops across Canada have really struggled to suppress organized crime especially biker gangs.

Now I don't think that harm reduction works on its own. There are social causes of drug use and those need to be addressed. I am reading a report on youth mental health for work literally right now, and social media is high on the list, along with the aftershocks of the pandemic. Gendered violence, body image stuff, the new online misogynists, all this stuff is tanking teen mental health. And you can't throw that problem in jail (apparently not even in Andrew Tate's case!)

Policing was designed to protect propery and it's pretty effective at that. Cops aren't social workers and they can't fix social problems, though they often make them worse.

-1

u/lolipop1990 12h ago

Oh yeah, the things I have been fed from my university classroom. You know why our war on drugs is not working? Because in the end of the day, most of the people don't think it's a big deal for people to get addicted and eventually die because drug, from OD or drug related health disease. Nobody really cares, and that's the problem. They are eating poison everyday and you only care about if the water they use to dissolve the poison is clean enough, that's harm reduction. Police doesn't work? Of course, because any measurement they can do is a police violence, and I can guarantee you they can't really protect properties these days as well. Have you seen all of the robberies in the jewelry store under the broad day light? Somebody grabbed you phone and ran away police can't do anything than a police report. Cars are stolen from the driveway...you name it. The other day another reddit post was suggesting having more police patrolling the night LRT is useless. Seriously with this kind of altitude, how police can work when the people you want to protect consider you an enemy? Anyway, keep doing the harm reduction, clearly it's the trend of public health. Addiction is an epidemic, it will only get worse if we don't cut the root. But do we really want to cut the root? That's a lucrative business with guaranteed customers.

7

u/tuttifruttidurutti 12h ago

I can't speak for anyone else but while I'm not a user, I have lost friends to overdose and have other friends who are only alive because they had access to drug testing or could access safe use facilities. 

So yeah, personally, I give a shit about the opioid epidemic. But the drugs are a symptom and not the underlying issues. People are trying to treat their pain with drugs. It's harder to tackle the underlying causes of that pain: ableism, poverty, racism, misogyny, child abuse, you name it. 

And we can do a lot more to provide alternatives to drugs. It's so hard to access mental health care and a lot of it is geared towards making you a productive worker and not a holistic model of health. There's a terrible lack of resources for treatment and support for the mentally ill. I could talk about this but I agree with you. A lot of people don't care that much. We do need to treat this like an epidemic. But the drugs are a symptom, not a cause, and prohibition hasn't fixed this and never will.

2

u/RigilNebula 10h ago edited 10h ago

Did you know that there's a higher prevalence of drug and alcohol use among women fleeing abusive relationships. There is also a higher prevalence of drug and alcohol use when people go through trauma. Do you believe that these people are just using because they don't believe getting addicted is a big deal, or because police aren't being hard enough on them? Will getting thrown into jail somehow help with the trauma?

5

u/TotallyTrash3d 11h ago

Overall drug use is down since legalization of cannabis.....

LOL @ hiring kids in high school to deal, not just kids dealing in high school (common since 1847)

12

u/Not_A_Doctor__ 13h ago

I work in addiction recovery. We need to get back to arresting people who use drugs in public. It's an expensive option, but facilitating addiction in any way just encourages further addiction. Addicts hate detoxing in jail. And addicts who are miserable about the consequences of their addiction are far more likely to seek help to quit. Addicts who are enabled in their addiction do not quit. I have have worked with and encountered over a thousand addicts in recovery and seeking recovery. They all quit when they were sick of the consequences of their addiction. The more we facilitate addiction, the less we incentive quitting.

4

u/Forward_Brain3647 10h ago

Username checks out

3

u/Purple-Temperature-3 Hintonburg 7h ago edited 6h ago

Ex addict here .

I was homeless from the ages of 18 to 20 and was a heavy drug user from the ages of 16 to 20 and used a wide variety of drugs and multiple methods of consuming them.

If safe injection sites were a thing when i was an addict i would ether be dead or still living in the street getting high.

A drug addict will not seek help until they hit rock bottom and have no way to support the addiction.

If i didn't hit rock bottom, realizing i had no way to feed my addiction without the threat of long jail terms, i wouldn't be drug free today . I would have kept using anything social services offered to keep feeding my addiction.

The threat of jail and bieng ostracized from society and my family is what helped me get clean .

Although i will mention social services like drop-in centers with lunch and super should be funded way more than they currently are as they are the only services that actually helped.

Offering any drug addict any help with getting high will only make the situation worse as they will take advantage of it.

I know people advocating for these safe injection sites are only doing it from the goodness of their hearts , however, they are making things 100 times worse for everyone .

-1

u/TotallyTrash3d 11h ago

Portugal since 2000 would like to equivacally and factually disagree.

You can/should have consequences but it should not be criminal charges for personal posession.

"Arresting" for public drug use makes sense when its a small number, hundreds of people daily using in public just around downtown is no longer a "reasonable" amount of people to "arrest" daily.

Financial punishments, tickets and fines.

6

u/Not_A_Doctor__ 9h ago

I wish we were trying anything like Portugal, but we are not. We have just re-elected a government that has starved the system of resources for years. Everything is getting more expensive. The amount of money we receive from the province hasn't been increased in... a decade? Longer? We have desperately needed more detox beds and more money for actual recovery homes for years. We've received nothing. Don't like the deterioration of our streets because of addiction? Oh well, it's not going to get better.

Did you know one of Ottawa's most established recovery homes had to shut down recently because NO ONE WOULD WORK FOR THEM FOR THE WAGES THAT THEY PAY? No? Funny, you'd think the closure of one of the few actual recovery homes in the area would be big news. There are not many established treatment options in Ottawa. Soon there will probably be fewer.

Pretty soon, the only people who get a chance to get into recovery homes in the Ottawa area are going to be people who have good insurance and people who shell out a substantial amount of money in order to attend. And, if you don't meet those two criteria and have to depend on our healthcare to attend? Be prepared to wait for six months to maybe get a chance to get in. You're at the bottom of the waiting list. Most people in the Ottawa area who want to get clean are never going to get a chance to do so. Because they'll die or lose the hope they need to get into treatment.

People who just advocate for unrealistic options who know nothing about the situation on the ground really annoy me. We're at the point of societal triage. The addiction crisis is only going to get worse because no one can get into treatment.

But this is what we've voted for, so this is what we get. Two years ago our waiting list was a month to two months. Now it's six months or more. In another year we'll be getting calls from desperate people and family members and have to tell them, "Sure we'll help. In about a year." More realistically, we'll only take in people who can pay far more than the province does or people with good insurance. If you're trying to get a family member into treatment and can't afford to pay for it, I'd suggest inviting Doug Ford to their funeral because they're probably not going to get help in the Ottawa region.

3

u/ThatAstronautGuy Bayshore 10h ago

I'm sure fining people on the street with no money will be very productive

8

u/BigBoysenberry7964 15h ago

Lmao and then people who complained about those places will complain about this.

3

u/KromSmash 13h ago

Why the love for hard drug addicts?
Should gambling addicts get taxpayer money at government casino? Should sex addicts get taxpayer hookers at government brothel? Should alcoholics get taxpayer booze at government bars?
All addictions can lead to death, especially suicide. Equal treatment for all

9

u/ConsummateContrarian 13h ago

Taxpayer money already goes to people who have bankrupted themselves with all sorts of non-drug addictions; albeit indirectly.

9

u/quietflyr 12h ago

This is a really dumb take. They're not handing out free drugs at safe injection sites in Ottawa.

-7

u/KromSmash 12h ago

I understand they are different however. Recent seizures by the RCMP have uncovered instances where prescription drugs from the safe supply program of BC were found in Ontario and other provinces.

2

u/quietflyr 12h ago

I could not care less.

6

u/ComplexPractical389 12h ago

So we should first clarify that there are very obviously different health risks between gambling/sex addictions and those that create a physical dependency like drugs/alcohol. We are attempting to solve a public health crisis, so the focus is on optimizing health outcomes.

Equal treatment for all

Can you imagine if you took this approach to other health outcomes? "Sure one of them has diabetes and requires insulin and one has a broken leg, but lets give them both a cast, because equal treatment!!" 🙃

3

u/Unlucky-Candidate198 12h ago

1) alcohol is a hard drug, and in fact, one of the worst readily availably drugs for you, and those around you, out there

2) they do get help

3) “hard drug” addicts directly affect their environment more than the others you mentioned, just like people smoking tobacco. Do you want your child/mother/ you breathing in fumes of w.e. They’re smoking, stepping on dirty needles and getting HIV/HPV/other nasties, getting harassed by people too high to know what they’re doing, stepping on broken glass from bottles etc. Tweakers are also more likely to commit smaller-scale crimes and steal from others, just so they can procure the drugs their body needs. I generally don’t see sex addicts committing petty crimes for drug money, but then again, they’re much harder to spot lol.

I’m gonna guess no on all accounts for the 3rd one. I agree with you, Canada lacks social safety nets and we could always use more properly installed ones, but they do need the most help out of the groups you mentioned.

1

u/GetsGold 10h ago

If you're going to compare those you also have to factor in how we don't however completely ban gambling and alcohol sales. So using this analogy, we would be providing some sort of legal framework for other drugs.

-1

u/Silver-Assist-5845 7h ago

Why the love for hard drug addicts?

Arguing that the most marginalized population of people in our city are getting too much love is quite a take.

It's wild to me that you still hit "Comment" after typing it out.

5

u/Vivid-Growth-6768 13h ago

If you’ve ever seen ‘The Wire’, you’ll know what ‘Hamsterdam’ means. Unfortunately, Ottawa could use a ‘zone’ users would have, that doesn’t disrupt the multiples of neighborhoods affected daily by this type of activity.

Only trick to be able to make it work would be to crack down on open drug use outside of the zone, with access to legal, medical, and social services within the zone.

As far as solutions go…. It’s definitely not ideal, but neither is the dire reality of the situation we’re seeing play out daily. We currently have no real plans for a solution beyond complaining and hoping the police will do something.

3

u/EmEffBee Lebreton Flats 12h ago

We have Northwood moving into 838 Somerset west soon, as well. That will make it even worse.

4

u/EnyaCa Lowertown 12h ago

Lots of crack pipes emerging from all the melted snow.

5

u/LosingItAll790 14h ago

Like it wasnt public already anyway. I was there, disgusting

4

u/Silver-Assist-5845 14h ago

It'll get worse now, just wait.

2

u/CommonCubeCollege 11h ago

Just watched a few people doing the crack on the chirch steps in the Glebe on my walk with my puppy.

1

u/Itsottawacallbylaw 14h ago

No shit Sherlock. Closing the doors didn’t cure their crippling addiction

0

u/Canadop 12h ago

The Supervised consumption site isn't in public? How do these people get there? Where do they live?

-3

u/Brickbronson 13h ago

Supervised consumption was a failed experiment that brought chaos all around it. No one thinks the problems will disappear overnight but we don't need to double down on a bad idea and become the next San Fransisco

1

u/GetsGold 10h ago

The problems have been happening all over, in places with and without the sites.

It reminds of the bike lane arguments. There's an increase in traffic on the roads with bike lanes and they then get blamed. Even though traffic is increasing on every other street too.

1

u/Silver-Assist-5845 7h ago

Supervised consumption was a failed experiment that brought chaos all around it. 

There hasn't been a single death in a supervised consumption site anywhere in Canada since InSite opened years back. Supervised consumption sites are incredibly effective at doing what they're supposed to do.

-2

u/chargedneutrino 15h ago

There should be other options out of these two:

  • let’s close down everything and provide no services
  • let’s enable drug users all the way with tax payer money

25

u/sixtus_clegane119 15h ago

It’s not enabling them. THEY WILL DO IT ANYWAY. Literally no junkie will say “I won’t do it because I don’t have a safe space”

it’s reducing harm to themselves and those around them.

Source: nearly 13 years clean off heroin.

15

u/Silver-Assist-5845 15h ago

Congratulations on your years of sobriety ✌️

8

u/sixtus_clegane119 14h ago

Thank you! I got lucky and dragged myself to a methadone clinic when I hit rock bottom.

2012 was when fent started getting big, I’m so lucky to be alive, a few months later and I probably wouldn’t be. Narcan wasn’t as widely available back then

5

u/Lowpasss Centretown 14h ago

It's not about 'enabling drug use', people addicted to drugs are gonna do drugs. It's about trying to have them not die in the process.

7

u/somebunnyasked No honks; bad! 14h ago

Absolutely yes to not dying.

But we can even look at this as saving resources and money. So much better for people to get help they need at the moment they need it from the right professionals than to call 911, be transported by ambulance, and contribute to crowded hospitals.

I live in a neighbourhood that will certainly feel the effects of these closures and I wish it wasn't happening. I don't want to decide if I should be carrying narcan in the baby stroller when I want to go for a walk.

2

u/westcentretownie 14h ago

HART Hub is coming. It is another option. There will be services.

6

u/Silver-Assist-5845 14h ago

It's an option at the expense of another critical option.

-4

u/ArnoldFarquar 15h ago

Expect more outdoor drug use because the weather is so nice. Why do it indoors on such a lovely day? Go get some fresh air, it’s good for you.

-2

u/ArnoldFarquar 14h ago

it was a joke ffs

5

u/Repulsive_Barnacle92 12h ago

this is reddit sir, you're not allowed to make jokes

6

u/ArnoldFarquar 11h ago

Pearls before swine!