The Ford Government's Latest Policy Will Kill Drug Users

We need to call policy decisions what they are: active choices that often have life and death consequences. The Tories are choosing death.

Note: As many of you know, my column covering Ontario politics was cut from TVO this week. I’m sad to lose that space. I’ve enjoyed working with my editors there, writing each week and holding the government to account.

Rather than trying to place my Ontario coverage with another mainstream publication, I’m going to move it here where I can engage directly with readers and accept subscriptions to support my work without worrying about suddenly losing the gig.

I’m really encouraged by the fact that since I shared the TVO news, I’ve gained nearly 350 new subscribers, including almost 50 paid subscriptions. That means the world to me. Thank you so much for your support.

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This week, we learned that the Doug Ford government in Ontario is closing supervised consumption sites within 200 metres of schools and child care centres, all the while it liberalizes alcohol sales, including turning 7-Eleven stores into what we might call, well, supervised consumption sites. But never mind that for now.

The government says it’s moving to a treatment model, but we know what’s going to happen. People who use drugs are going to die from overdoses of a poisoned supply. Experts will tell you as much. So would common sense. Indeed, as the CBC is reporting, the province’s own experts recommended against the closures.

We know that treatment alone won’t solve the drug poisoning crisis and that you can’t simply strong-arm people into not using substances, even if investments in treatment ought to be welcome. We can also bet, based on the Progressive Conservative’s record, that their treatment strategy will be poorly conceived, inadequately funded, and sloppily executed in the long run.

Writing in the Toronto Star, Manisha Krishnan details just how bad the government’s policy is — how costly, how deadly. She calls it a “death sentence.” I highly recommend you read her detailed work on this issue, both in the Star and elsewhere.

Policy choices have consequences. Sometimes deadly consequences. Image source: Wendy Scofield on Unsplash.

Ontario is set to end up with the closure of 10 of the province’s 17 supervised consumption sites — locations that have, notably, never seen an overdose that led to a death. They are being replaced with a treatment alternative which, while necessary, isn’t enough on its own,

The Ford government is also moving ban new supervised consumption sites and will make it illegal for municipalities to press for drug decriminalization from the feds. I guess that’s just more of the government’s ‘hands off’ approach to managing cities, which is to say their grab-them-by-the-arm-and-twist strategy.

And here we come to the hear of the matter, where whatever rhetoric is floated by Ford and his cynical Cabinet members is stripped bare to reveal the state’s true purpose. While you might argue that it’s just common sense and entirely reasonable to ban these sites from locations where children tend to congregate — schools or child care centres — protecting kids is clearly not what the Tories care about it.

Rather, the government is using an ostensible concern for children as a cudgel to force their ideologically-driven agenda on drug users, harming them and those who care for them. The idea that the problem of a needle on the street near a school — and, yes, that is indeed a problem — will be solved by shutting down supervised consumption sites is absurd. If anything, you’re going to end up with more needles on the street. And corpses. I think that’s far worse.

If the government were truly motivated by a concern about the location of these sites, they’d move them. But they’re effectively banning them, engaging in a war of attrition by way of ramp-up in the failed War on Drugs.

If the government were truly concerned about drug users, they’d also do more than pump money into treatment. They’d commit to ending the drug poisoning crisis by getting to the root of the problem, which includes a deadly supply of substances intersecting for many, though not all, with any number of deeper structural issues including pharamceutical corporations deliberately getting users addicted to substances, homelessness, poverty, inequality, mental illness, and more.

If the government truly cared about public health, first are foremost they’d confront the toxic supply of drugs. Which they won’t do. Then they’d dig into broader and deeper reforms. Which they also won’t do. That’s because the government doesn’t really care about drug users — their policy choices tell us as much; rather, they care about appearances and about a slavish devotion to their own narrowmindedness. And that is going to be deadly choice for drug users.