Canada's safe injection sites, 20 years on, face pushback

"What we've been doing to date has not been working,"

No kidding.

Tent cities everywhere, zombies walking the streets, public spaces being used as open air toilets and children walking past syringes and human feces on the way to school.

I'm coming around to the mandatory detox idea. No criminal record, come as many times as you like, but you will be spending the next six months in custody to make sure you are clean.

"Harm reduction activists" have caused more harm than they can imagine. 30 years ago I was very wililng to argue that these methods be given a chance, but it's clear now they don't work. During the years these activist's have had sway over policy, drug addiction, lawlessness, and homelessness have all gotten worse. Time to acknolwedge that the experiment was tried but failed, and move on to an alternative approach.

"Harm reduction activists" have caused more harm than they can imagine. 30 years ago I was very wililng to argue that these methods be given a chance, but it's clear now they don't work.

Without evidence this claim has no merit, the article clearly shows the sites have reduced the harm to the addicts, which is the purpose they have.

During the years these activist's have had sway over policy, drug addiction, lawlessness, and homelessness have all gotten worse.

But unless you can prove the centers have a role in making the problem worse you can't claim this, the result would have been the same if the actual cause is different, with an increase in spite of the sites and not thanks to them. The purpose is to deal with a serious consequence of drug addiction (and apparently this is being achieved), not about solving the whole situation that is much more complex and have many different causes. This is like having a patient with a pathogen infection, giving the patient an antipyretic to avoid an extreme fever that could kill him will keep him alive, so criticizing this because the medicine do not solve the infection makes no sense, that depends on other actions that also have to be taken.

Having just visited Vancouver, one thing I noticed as an advantage was that a majority of the drug users were clustered around safe injection sites unlike Seattle and Portland where they're everywhere. I certainly prefer high concentration over dispersion for public safety.