EDITORIAL: Time to treat addicts, not enable them

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Ontario Premier Doug Ford has made the right choice in ordering the closure of safe injection sites that are closer than 200 metres to schools and child care centres.

This will result in the closure of 10 of 17 safe injection sites around the province. Saskatchewan and Alberta are expected to closely monitor the changes to see how the policy could be replicated in those provinces.

Announcing the new rules last week, Health Minister Sylvia Jones said operators of safe injection sites within that 200-metre limit will have to relocate or transition to one of the province’s new Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment Hubs. The province is providing $378 million towards the creation of the recovery centres.

This is a sensible way forward, but predictably Opposition MPPs are up in arms.

“Not a single community in our province is asking the government to take away existing resources and programs,” said NDP Health critic France Gelinas.

Perhaps Gelinas should talk to people in the communities where they’ve wreaked mayhem.

Spadina-Fort York MP Kevin Vuong said his community is “relieved and grateful,” to Ford for taking action, “instead of ignoring them or, worse, gaslighting them as the NDP has been doing for years.”Meanwhile, the stats don’t show safe injection sites have been successful in saving lives. In fact, the evidence points in the opposite direction.

Toronto Sun columnist Brian Lilley reports that since Ontario got its first safe injection site in 2017, the number of deaths from opioid overdoses has more than doubled – from 1,270 to 2,531.

While the so-called experts predict carnage on the streets as a result of the Ford government’s plan, most sensible people – especially those with a safe injection site around the corner from their home – know they’re unsafe in residential areas.

“We tried the path called for by the experts the government is now accused of ignoring, and the deaths doubled,” wrote Lilley. Perhaps the “experts” would think differently if the site was in their neighbourhood.

There’s an adage that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting different results. That applies here.

It’s time to listen to common sense and provide treatment for addicts, not enable them in their addiction.