Do the right thing

Toronto city council has a simple decision to make next week — whether to approve three supervised injection sites. It should do the right thing and move ahead with a project that could save hundreds of lives.

There’s powerful evidence in favour of safe injection sites. The city’s medical officer of health has set out a compelling case that they save lives by giving drug users a clean place to inject drugs, using sterile needles, without fear of arrest. Trained nurses would be on hand to respond to overdoses by injecting users with naloxone, an antidote to excess opioids.

That alone would justify opening supervised sites. Deaths from overdose in Toronto are rising sharply; the latest statistics show they were up 22 per cent in 2014 to 252, from 206 the year before.

There’s a good chance that many of those people could have been saved if they had been kept alive long enough to receive effective treatment for their addiction.

A striking example came just on Monday, when the board of health heard about the fate of Brooklyn McNeil, a 22-year-old woman who had planned to speak to them in favour of supervised injection sites. Instead, board members learned that she had died from an overdose on June 22. Her silence spoke volumes.

Aside from saving lives, supervised sites should have a positive effect on the surrounding community. The reality is that many drug users will inject wherever they can in the absence of a safe, supervised place.

They will shoot up in parks and alleys — and often leave needles behind for children and others to find. Councillor Joe Cressy, chair of the city’s drug strategy implementation panel, has said that supervised sites “move drug use and needles from our streets, our parks, our backyards and our coffee shops.”

Most of the public seems to get that. Traditional opposition to supervised sites has faded in light of the evidence about saving lives and community safety. A Forum Research poll in March showed that support has actually grown in the past few years. Most of those surveyed — 57 per cent — agreed with having supervised injection sites downtown.

The city wants to approve three sites in existing health facilities — one at Bathurst and Queen Sts., one near Dundas Square, and one in South Riverdale. If council gives the go-ahead next week, the next step will be for the city to ask Ottawa for exemptions under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

Councillors should seize the moment and push this project forward.

Toronto city councillors should approve three injection sites