She says she hopes the revised legislation will “strike that balance between addressing problematic public consumption but also ensuring that people who use drugs in our communities are safe and are able to do so in places where they’re not alone.”
Then put it in the legislation to build safe sites. The wording of the legislation as it currently stands essentially bans use from anywhere; an out-of-site-out-of-mind approach. It is a poor approach to a public health crisis.
Then put it in the legislation to build safe sites
There’s no way for safe-use sites to make someone rich: you can’t give people a tax break to run them, you can’t have an “accelerator fund” that’ll make some hustler rich running one, and you sure as hell can’t get money from addicts. The only way to make them work would be to tax people to pay for them, and run them publicly, and not fucking way are our neoliberal overlords going to go for that.
Like addicts give a shit about this law. What are police going to do? Lock up every addict in Vancouver? There’s no viable enforcement method and this will only impact non-addicts. What a waste of time and resources.
Banning it in public spaces will just worsen the problem as more folks would die of overdosing alone.
Public safety comes first. I don’t care if people feel uncomfortable that some do illicit drugs out and about. They need help not stigma.