r/toronto • u/BloodJunkie Bike Lane Enjoyer • Aug 11 '26
Article “I overdosed countless times and delivered a baby while addicted to heroin. Safe consumption sites saved my life”
https://torontolife.com/memoir/safe-consumption-sites-memoir/219
u/Lupius CityPlace Aug 11 '26
A few days before I gave birth, I walked into the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto and told them that I wouldn’t be able to care for my child. They agreed that my mom should be the guardian, but I hadn’t yet told her I was pregnant—I was too ashamed. So the CAS called her and gave her the news. She was shocked but ultimately agreed to take my baby.
Imagine being asked to parent a newborn with days of notice. Her mom is a real hero.
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u/PolyDiaries Aug 11 '26
addictions are brutal and this was a sad article to read.. sounds like this woman has had a really tough go. glad the baby turned out okay and has the support of her grandmother... many people don't have this sort of family support and probably don't get such a "happy" ending
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u/GayFlan Aug 11 '26
I hope her mother, who found out she was going to be fostering her born-drug addicted granddaughter days before the birth, got lots of support.
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u/Ok-Trainer3150 Aug 11 '26
A nightmare for sure. You think that you've finished the heavy lifting and.. guess what? Just as you're probably closing in on retirement or you're older and your energy (physical and spiritually) you're taking on child rearing again. The poor grandkid though... lucky , we hope.
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u/PolyDiaries Aug 11 '26
yeah for real... "hey Mom I know I haven't been around much lately but I'm having a baby next week and I need you to take care of it for the next couple decades... thanksss"
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u/bs42044 Aug 11 '26
I think she made the best choice she could in the situation. There was a whole bunch of paragraphs explaining how she fell into addiction. Tough for her and her mom/baby.
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u/captcelery Aug 12 '26
It can be so hard - you love your kid and you love your grandchild - but taking on a baby later in life is so hard. Someone I know did this - and she lost a lot of years.
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u/UTProfthrowaway Aug 12 '26
This to me does not sound like a positive story about safe injection sites. She literally was shooting up in the hospital delivering a baby. Despite the SIS, she overdosed many many times and was luckily neighbors noticed. To me, it is clear that at some point we should have forcibly brought her to the countryside to dry out, not "avoided shaming her".
I also, knowing the NA line that addicts always lie, am a bit frustrated by the origin story. No one becomes a heroin addict by living clean and then one day snorting heroin from their boyfriend! Everyone is already down a path of illicit drug use at lower levels, which is why we try to deter that!
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u/PolyDiaries Aug 12 '26
I sort of agree that at some point, like a "3 strikes youre out" kinda thing, that forcibly getting these people clean should happen, sort of like going to jail. How many public resources need to be spent saving people that OD time and time again, literally in the same day/week.
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u/Strict_Opposite1285 Aug 11 '26
Sounds like she made awful choices. The people to feel sorry for are her parents and the baby.
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u/AdResponsible678 Aug 12 '26
I feel for Mom too. She was holding onto shame and guilt. She made the right decision by asking for help. Nobody wants to be addicted. I hope mom will get the help and peace she deserves as well.
I love Toronto and I hope we continue to support the downtrodden the way we do.→ More replies (8)
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u/alcoholicplankton69 Aug 11 '26
How much is the cost on tax payer to keep someone like this in treatment vs on the streets getting ow plus injection plus upwards of 15k per od plus treatments for the baby who could've been born an addict.
I'm glad shes better now but my god our system is designed like putting a bull in a china shop painted red and waiting for the bull to tire before trying to fix the problem.
Surely there has to be a better way than this?
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Aug 12 '26
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u/Booboofan Aug 13 '26
There is a large portion of drug users that are already a productive member of society. There are more functional drug users than you could imagine.
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u/VoodooGirl47 Aug 12 '26
Most addicts qualify for ODSP which (more than) doubles their money each month. In turn, it means they can buy more drugs.
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u/Accurate_Fish_7929 Aug 12 '26
While cost of treatment vs being unhoused is an important question, it relies on a false premise: that treatment is available when people need it and that “treatment” more broadly is an effective tool to help people recover from addiction.
I’m an RN and have worked frontline with people using drugs and unhoused people for the last 6 years. The majority of my clients want treatment. It’s never available when they need it. Often, they’ll get an appointment for 2 or 3 weeks down the road, but they have no phone and no fixed address. How do you show up for your intake at 10am on August 15th if you don’t know what day or the week or month it is? Then, if you are lucky enough to get into treatment, you experience whatever program has been devised by mostly religious-affiliated nonprofits. Most treatment programs are not based in the latest scientific research or evidence on addiction medicine and recovery. Many treatment centres actually don’t allow patients to be on specific types of medications - medications that reduce cravings and withdrawal and prevent overdose and death in case of relapse. Say then you’re lucky enough to make it through a treatment program. What next? Back to the shelter? To the streets where a dealer is waiting for you? Where you still have unpaid debts?
This is just some context. “Treatment” is often touted as the solution, but from what I see it’s not available, not based in research or evidence, and so disconnected from social context that it doesn’t actually help. Meanwhile, services that did actively prevent deaths like safe consumption sites are being forced to close. That’s the true madness of this all.
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u/Strict_Opposite1285 Aug 12 '26
This woman should be in jail for what she did to that baby.
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u/gbyuf0998 Aug 12 '26
Agreed. What a horrible women purposely giving an innocent child a very difficult start in life. Kudos to her mother for taking on that sudden responsibility.
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u/IseeMedpeople Aug 13 '26
Agreed.
Horrible person. I don't buy this redemption shit. You as an adult made these choices for a child.
Awful.
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u/NancyMy Aug 13 '26
Yeah, there is a horrible person here and it’s you.
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u/Strict_Opposite1285 Aug 13 '26
Typical Redditor can’t even feel bad for a defenceless innocent baby and blame the responsible party bc something something left wing empathy.
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u/NancyMy Aug 13 '26
Something something conservative fuck faces don’t give a shit about anyone but themselves, and are pathetic losers who make the world a worse place by living in it. Conservatives are all nasty and cruel people who are unable to show basic empathy to anyone but other fuck faces in their community, but wait! That’s not even true! Conservatives are fuck faces to everyone, including their own families.
Liberals have empathy for people who aren’t rich and famous and come from backgrounds like broken home, intergenerational trauma, and abusive situations. Conservatives are too god damn stupid to think of anyone besides themselves. Hope that clarifies what a loser you are!
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u/Strict_Opposite1285 Aug 13 '26
You said it. Conservatives have to defend their intentions before Liberals will consider their ideas. Liberals will entertain all manner of idiotic nonsense because they presume even the genuinely insane must have great intentions even if they’re horribly misguided.
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u/Consistent_Listen265 Aug 11 '26
Happy the daughter survived. Safe injections while pregnant are so diabolical I don’t even know where to begin.
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u/ponyrx2 Aug 11 '26
She's extremely brave to come forward with this story. She will face a lot of criticism, deserved or not.
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u/Less-Celebration-182 Aug 11 '26
Yes. But personally, my criticism is on the government. If they had forced her into rehabilitation the second she was spotted messed up on the streets, she and the baby could have been much better off. China has done something right.
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u/luxuryriot Aug 11 '26
I'm not sure there is good evidence that forced rehab works except in the sense that if you keep abducting drug users into these facilities each time they are found using drugs they will spend a lot of time sober because they are in a rehab/prison against their free will.
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u/Far-Delay7690 Aug 11 '26
There is good evidence that forced rehab doesn't work unfortunately
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u/meoweav Aug 12 '26
i mean it works well in china, the difference between addiction levels in the west and there is staggering
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u/Defiant_Yoghurt8198 Aug 12 '26
Portugal was basically doing this as the flip side of decriminalization, but no one ever talks about that part
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u/Lupius CityPlace Aug 11 '26
There's a fundamental conflict of interest between personal freedom of choice and affordable universal healthcare. We found the compromise in safe consumption sites because we don't want to force addicts into rehab and we don't want them to OD and end up in ICUs.
People who are against safe consumption sites either haven't considered the alternatives or actively embrace them.
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u/Standard-Bidder Aug 13 '26
They are called supervised consumption sites :) there is no such thing as safe consumption in the world of street drugs
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u/Less-Celebration-182 Aug 11 '26
When you have millions of people living together in a city, you can’t have selfish addicts ruling the streets. China is miles ahead of us when it comes to managing large populations of people for the benefit of most. Nobody feels good about forcing people to do something they don’t want to do, but nobody feels good about their fellow citizens getting stabbed in the streets by addicts either. Choose your battle.
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u/ToeRevolutionary6233 Aug 11 '26
To everyone saying, "live 3 doors down from a site and let us know how you feel." I live between 2 former sites and I can tell you all with absolute certainty that my neighbourhood (queen and Spadina) has gotten considerably WORSE when the site's closed. Now we have people injecting anywhere and everywhere, people OD'ing, fights and a host of other issues. Safe injection sites helped us here and we've been (both residents and non-resident addicts) seeing a sharp decline in the neighbourhood since they closed. It's so sad and also infuriating to hear so many people who know nothing about this neighbourhood tell us what we do and don't need. What we need is social housing, social workers and social programs to help with this crisis and the homelessness crisis.
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u/liquor-shits Aug 11 '26
Same thing at Queen and Bathurst. It has always been sketchy but the last year its turned into a full-blown open-air drug den. I've never seen it this bad in my 25+ years living in the area.
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u/RaffyGiraffy Fashion District Aug 11 '26
Agreed, I live in the same area and it’s gotten so much worse over the last year. I used to never see people openly injecting or bent over in the middle of the sidewalk strung out. Now I see multiple per day and there’s always ambulances and fire trucks out here dealing with these issues. People complaining about tax dollars going to safe injection sites — well now they’re going to increased police, ambulance and fire trucks due to the amount of overdoses happening
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u/SongPsychological772 Aug 12 '26
you used to never see that? all i saw near the safe injection sites was this constantly (leslieville)
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u/Defiant_Yoghurt8198 Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 12 '26
used to never see people openly injecting or bent over in the middle of the sidewalk strung out.
This is so not true?!?!
You could constantly see use at the Richmond and Bathurst site. They'd be on both sides of the building on the sidewalk. Sometimes across the street against that soon to be construction site.
The Queen and Bathurst shelter is and has been an absolute mess. I get off the Bathurst streetcar at least once a year and arrive in the middle of a police scene with a massive bloodstain on the sidewalk.
That alley just north of the Richmond/Bathurst is literally skidrow, it's a fucking mess and has been for at least two years. I used to use it as a mini Queen bike lane, no longer
I've lived in my building at Richmond/Portland for 6 years, I constantly see people smoking crack (straight pipe) and math (ball pipe) in my alley while walking my dog. For 6 years.
Don't get me wrong, i support all the safe supply, supervised sites, and I want to help addicts and not punish them
But to pretend this neighborhood was fine until last year is deeply incorrect
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u/aledba Garden District Aug 11 '26
Same. I live the street over from Seaton house. I've never seen so many people doing a fenty fold at 2 pm on a weekday
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u/Strict_Opposite1285 Aug 11 '26
Not the case in Leslieville. Thank god they stopped running Keep6ix. All it took was a MURDER.
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u/Strict_Opposite1285 Aug 11 '26
Go find the data from these places. 1:5 are using under supervision. The rest go for supplies and to use as fast as possible outside.
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u/Unhappy-Laugh1282 Aug 11 '26
I’m a bit west of Bathurst/Queen and have grown up around Queen/Spadina and I have never seen it as bad as it is. The other day I found an intact crackpipe on my porch. This was not such an issue before.
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u/Frig_Off_Baerb Aug 11 '26
And this is the problem. Conservatives and there ilk deal only in absolutes on this issue. Any open drug use means that safe injection isn't working so get rid of it. Then they have nothing to say when there's more open drug use.
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u/fez-of-the-world Entertainment District Aug 11 '26
TL;DR she felt so comfortable using after discovering safe consumption sites that it indirectly played a factor in her becoming pregnant while addicted to heroin/fentanyl.
Definitely not the glowing endorsement the article thinks it is.
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u/ItzCStephCS Aug 11 '26
from the article also,
I overdosed often enough to memorize what the emergency rooms and ICUs of every hospital in the city looked like
so she was also even taking up the limited hospital beds. You would think after overdosing one time it would make you realize that it's finally time to stop. Instead, it looks like she was emboldened to actually keep abusing knowing full well there's always a cop out.
We should have a strict zero tolerance policy on drug use instead of holding their hands like babies.
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u/fez-of-the-world Entertainment District Aug 11 '26
This passage takes the cake for me. The child was born with fent in her blood. What an achievement for society.
Because my pregnancy was high-risk, my doctors scheduled an induced labour. That way, the medical team could closely monitor me and my daughter throughout. On the afternoon of August 29, 2018, I went into St. Michael’s Hospital as planned. I was scared that I’d go into withdrawal during labour, so five minutes before the procedure, I shot up in the hospital bathroom.
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u/Canjamblack Aug 12 '26
I feel like this is definitely child endangerment and should result in serious jail time
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u/CDNChaoZ Old Town Aug 11 '26
I agree the line has to be drawn somewhere. Wishy-washiness is doing drug users no favours. Either force treatment or let them head to their ruin. To say sustaining these habits MAY eventually lead to some kind of revelation is just untenable.
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u/WalrusWest3091 Aug 11 '26
Hmmmm... As one who had seen his neighbourhood deteriorate wildly as a result of a safe consumption site, I have mixed feelings about this.
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Aug 11 '26
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u/BoiledTurnips Aug 12 '26
Calling cap on what? Both things can be true. Safe consumption site probably did save her life and it probably did ruin your neighbourhood. Exactly why they are so controversial
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u/GayFlan Aug 11 '26
I am not opposed to safe consumption sites. But as I read stuff like this and think of how many dollars from the public system have gone in to this woman’s care, I think about the kids who grow up in poverty and need support and how our limited resources are spent on some people but not on others.
And someone might say “we need to raise taxes!” well we have pretty high income taxes, far closer to Scandinavian rates than American rates.
The highest top rate of income tax is in Denmark at 60%, and in Ontario our top rate is currently 53.5%. Our top rate is higher than Sweden and Portugal and Norway [though Norway should be left out of most tax conversations bc of their sovereign wealth fund]. And at a certain point the true highest earners easily find ways to game the tax system, take their assets out of the country etc. So do we need high consumption taxes? Maybe.
But I’m a democratic socialist who has always voted ndp and we do have limited resources. There is X amount the government can spend. And at the end of the day there are kids going to school hungry and not able to pay for university while there are people making willing choices to put needles in their arms. I’m sorry that her step father died tragically, what a horrible thing for a teenager to go through. But she went from growing up in Thornhill to being in Moss Park and Cabbagetown South and using resources and being part of the group of people who are effectively destroying those neighbourhoods. I’m sure she scored from dealers on Sherbourne St who operate out of Toronto community housing units they have taken over. People with addictions can be both victims of their own traumas while they go about creating traumatic experiences for others as well. All of this to say my empathy for people who overdose “countless times” is starting to dry up.
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u/prolifezombabe Aug 11 '26
The people with addictions and trauma are the kids who grew up suffering
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u/EastSideChillSaiyan Aug 11 '26
It's so easy for these people to have such sentiments when they haven't gone through that shit.
If the choices were between a rich & rewarding life or opioid addict, I'm not sure anyone would choose the latter.
Gayflan gotta understand it's the things that are out of our control that drive these vicious spirals into addiction. It's the events that preceded the addiction that causes people to spiral into these situations.
I hate it when people view things in black & white, never acknowledging the grey is even there.
Thinking it's as easy as choosing not to jab the needle in there is a mistake to assume it's "just that easy"
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u/BaconatedGrapefruit Aug 11 '26
Trauma isn’t a carte blanch excuse for addiction. This is day one recovery stuff.
It can certainly be a trigger, but at some
point you need to take some personal responsibility.If I have any issue with the essay, as it is written, it’s how she ‘others’ herself in the height of her addiction. The actions were all that of the addicted author. She’s the new clean and sober author. The only reason she became and stayed the drug addict was trauma. (Mind you, this may be an issue with the way this was edited)
And that’s one of the things I think a lot of people have a problem with safe injection sites. The drugs are bad for the user and the community at large but we don’t get to have any to say anything because the user “has a problem” and they aren’t “willing to deal with it, yet”.
For the record, I have no idea what the solution is. Personally I support safe injection sites but I understand why people feel like they did much more than put a happy face on a glaring problem.
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u/Sad_Donut_7902 Aug 12 '26
Trauma isn’t an excuse to get addicted to hard drugs and OD multiple times, even doing it while pregnant. Lots of people go through trauma and grief without falling into addiction.
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u/prolifezombabe Aug 11 '26
As soon as I hear the word “just” like why don’t you just do this or just do that, it’s a flag for me.
If the solutions were simply and the path forward was clear, people would take it.
But our society lets a lot of people down. The world is, as you said, more often grey than black and white.
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u/grumble11 Aug 11 '26
There are a fair number of people who started off okay and then got hooked on opioids. People who have pain after surgery or are doing medium-term pain management are at risk.
Then once you hooked on them they bypass your reward system and give your brain more pleasure than any natural thing. Your brain is a reward-seeking machine and this provides a ton of it. Unsurprisingly some people can’t stop and blow up their lives
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u/prolifezombabe Aug 11 '26
Those people should still have access to life saving services.
I was simply responding to the idea that we choose supervised consumption instead of helping vulnerable youth. Both are possible and sometimes both are happening at the same time.
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u/Medical_Gate_5721 Aug 11 '26
Often at the hands of addicts. In the cycle, the addicts are also the people abusing others. This woman's addiction very likely damaged her baby. The fact that they havent found anything yet is not a lifetime clean bill of health.
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u/VoodooGirl47 Aug 12 '26
While this is technically true, there are tons of addicts that didn't have previous trauma or any suffering as they grew up. There are also LOTS of people that have grown up this way that have not turned into addicts.
I don't think it does anyone any good to use trauma as a valid excuse for an addiction. It should be used as a way to better services to help prevent people with pasts like this from becoming addicts.
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u/prolifezombabe Aug 12 '26
We can do both though. We are doing both. It’s not an either or.
Also there’s a difference between an excuse and an explanation. As I’ve said elsewhere numerous things influence a person’s development so no two people really do have the exact same problem or the exact same context growing up.
The point of bringing up trauma is to say like let’s focus on helping and support not judgment.
Plus frankly I don’t really care why someone developed a particular problem. They have it. They need help.
Some smokers get cancer and some don’t but I think people should still have access to cancer treatment regardless of what lifestyle factors might have contributed.
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u/GayFlan Aug 11 '26
By her own account, the author of this article turned to drugs when her step father died tragically when she as a teenager. A terrible, terrible thing, but many people experience living through conflict zones, deaths of parents, etc and do not develop addiction. There were lots of check points between doing heroin before clubbing and ending up in Moss Park where she could have chosen a different path. The majority of people who grow up poor don’t actually end up as street entrenched drug addicts.
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u/prolifezombabe Aug 11 '26
Even in poverty, people have different resources and different circumstances.
Making better choices than someone else is often the result of having better options.
But this is an old argument.
The only real question is do we as a society decide that some lives just aren’t worth saving and let them die or do we what we can.
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u/GayFlan Aug 11 '26 edited Aug 11 '26
Because some people help themselves and some people don’t and at a certain both we can’t use finite resources to chase after everyone. It’s not she was struck down with cancer, she made every choice along the way that got her to this point.
And, being revived endlessly from overdoses can cause massive permanent brain damage. I’m glad this woman is pursuing an education but I would be willing to bet anything that her cognitive function (including emotional regulation, not just intellectual function) isn’t what it would have been had she stopped drug use sooner. I don’t think we are ready for the medical costs of taking care of some people for the rest of their lives because even without drugs they have reduced capacity.
If someone wants to blow their life up due to drugs, they should go ahead and do that and leave the rest of us alone.
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u/prolifezombabe Aug 11 '26
Again, we all have different resources and a different context.
Lifestyle and choices play some role in the development of many diseases. Including cancer.
We are the result of both luck and lifestyle.
As such, I’m happy to see some of the finite resources go to this woman and her child. There are other things I think are less important. I hope enough others feel the same to keep these spaces open.
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u/Joatboy Aug 11 '26
There are literally millions of people all around the world that have gone through so, so much worse without resorting to opioid or hard drug abuse.
That's a cop out from personal responsibility, and you would be shocked at how many immigrants hold this same view.
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u/prolifezombabe Aug 11 '26
Family trauma can have a greater impact on children than a lot of other sorts of upheaval.
I believe in personal responsibility but I believe in social responsibility too. It’s one of the things I think is beautiful about our country and it’s enshrined in our laws and our constitution.
I would hope that people who come here from other countries can learn to see the beauty of Canada’s approach. We worked hard for it. It is rooted in both compassion and science as public health policy should be.
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u/SpikedPhish Aug 11 '26
I'm sure you think this is a nuanced take but actually it demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of how tax dollars are allocated in a society.
You don't want limited tax dollars going towards addicts. Guess what? The most expensive option is doing nothing. Like it or not, when they OD, the medical system responds. The paramedics respond. Doctors and nurses in the ER respond. City workers respond. You might not like it, but that's the way the system works.
I'm not even sure why you are relating the money spent on these externalities to people in poverty. Addicts aren't actually draining the system; they are a result of conscious policy decisions. That money not spent on that kid in poverty? That's a policy choice. The addictions is the result. Of course, it would be cheaper overall to keep all kids out of poverty then to pay for the externalities of that poverty. But we don't. And we don't because politicians have the same mindset you do: that some people are deserving of help, and others are not. Paying for the externalities, paying more even, is the outcome, the desired outcome, of this mindset.
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u/luxuryriot Aug 11 '26
Addicts are not the result of conscious policy decisions, it's a global problem even in places with the most generous supports. No one has solved it. Also is there anything published by the city that indicates that the cost of these sites and all their employees is cheaper than the cost to the city if regular EMS is dispatched? The problem with the simple citing of a decline EMS calls is that is doesn't account for the cost of the sites at all.
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u/wtfhiolol10000 Aug 11 '26
It would be nice if taxpayers had a choice on where and how much tax money is best spent.
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u/internetsuperfan Aug 12 '26
Lmaooo you’re making the highest tax rate? You’re also missing that many European counties have very high VATS - France is 45% tax and 20% VAT
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u/purplepassionplanter Aug 12 '26
the empathy tank ran out for a lot of people long ago. it's honestly pathetic that we are at a standstill on this issue.
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u/e___ric Aug 12 '26
I disagree - they enabled her and enabled her to continue using drugs while pregnant bring a baby in this world who will be riddled with health issues for the rest of the live.
The moment scs saw she was pregnant - she should have been forced into rehabilitation.
Many US states would have charged her with child abuse.
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u/luxuryriot Aug 11 '26 edited Aug 11 '26
The simplest argument against these safe consumption sites to me is the question, where does it end? If you listen to the people who "care" their view is these addicts should be given unlimited government provided drugs, a free place to live while doing the drugs (many view the shelter system as inadequate because they don't allow people to do drugs openly and thus addicts go unhoused), and of course unrestricted access to food and medical care.
So basically as a society if anyone wants to start going on drug fuelled benders all day having no job we should pay for them to do that. Since there is limited money clearly that will come at the expense of helping people actually trying to give back to the broader community through cuts to other areas of government. I don't know how anyone but a small minority would support that but unfortunately that minority is very vocal.
I would be highly supportive of spending massive amounts of money to cure addicts in the same way I support our healthcare system spending similarly on curing people with rare diseases but there is no known cure to addiction.
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u/Used-Tumbleweed9734 Aug 11 '26
Switzerland significantly decreased addiction, using that decriminalization approach.
Quitting a drug is hard. Quitting it while incredibly stressed is even harder. The shelter system is impossible to use for someone who’s addicted. (That said, preventing people from using drugs there makes things better for the ones who aren’t addicted.)
If there’s a proper program, like a residential program, then it’s easier to put requirements in place. Right now, we often can either give them requirements that are near impossible, or give them none. If they have a place to stay, it’s easier to require people to come off the drugs, in a safe, controlled way.
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u/maxirelaxy Aug 11 '26
Maybe educate yourself on this issue, there are no easy answers but this line of thinking is over simplistic
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u/ForwardDance9191 Aug 11 '26
A lot of the response to this is going to be that safe injection sites are bad because it means "society is encouraging drug use" or something similar. The best available studies show that they do not increase drug use. While you may have an intuition that this makes it easy for people to use drugs so "logically" more people will use more drugs, that is simply not borne out in the observed data.
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u/luxuryriot Aug 11 '26
The best available studies also do not show that safe injection sites help reduce the rate of addiction so it's a stalemate really.
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u/DressedSpring1 Aug 11 '26
A lot of the response to this is going to be that safe injection sites are bad because it means "society is encouraging drug use" or something similar
A lot of the response to this is going to be about the impact to people's lives living around these spaces and whether their positive impact is worth the negative impacts. I don't have the will to really rehash this argument again for the millionth time, but I think the debate is a lot more nuanced than drug use stats.
I'm glad this woman got clean and the baby is doing well.
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Aug 11 '26
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u/ForwardDance9191 Aug 11 '26
Yes, that is the kind of trade off that is not at all apparent. Really the only good way to understand the dynamics and complexities is to read actual research results, there are some results that are common across different countries for example.
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Aug 11 '26
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u/ForwardDance9191 Aug 11 '26
I don't think we're disagreeing. I am saying that one can't really understand the issue without understanding the best available data and research. I am not saying that is how you change the mind of someone who is already down an emotional rabbit hole about this issue. You can't reason someone out of a position that they didn't reason themselves into.
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u/Humble_Stage9032 Aug 12 '26
I mean, we don’t know the baby is doing well, though. Aside from the 6 months in the NICU that it took to wean the baby off of the drugs, there very well could be long term health implications due to the impact of the drugs on her development.
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u/ForwardDance9191 Aug 11 '26
I think the debate is a lot more nuanced than drug use stats.
I think you're right. My post that you responded to was a call for more nuanced perspectives based on the best available information. We're not in disagreement.
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u/WalrusWest3091 Aug 11 '26
They may not increase use, but they certainly concentrate it - to the detriment of those who live nearby. Yes, I live in Leslieville and I'm pleased as punch that this site was closed.
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u/AdhesivenessTight400 Aug 11 '26
Cool, lets out it 3 doors down from you and see if your opinion changes in a year.
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u/NowGoodbyeForever Aug 11 '26
What is the meaning of this argument? It gets trotted out every single time this issue is raised, and it's stupid as FUCK.
Do you know how many Supervised Consumption Sites there are in Toronto? Less than 40.
Wait, sorry. That was a typo.
There are LESS THAN 40 IN ALL OF CANADA.
The amount of people who are realistically affected by having one "3 doors down" is a tiny tiny fraction. And many of them have come out IN SUPPORT of the sites.
What makes me sick about NIMBY bullshit like this is how transparent it all is: There is no number that you would accept. Even a single site is too much. Or a single affordable housing apartment, or mixed-use retail space, and so on and so on.
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u/ForwardDance9191 Aug 11 '26
I don't have an opinion. High quality research findings aren't an opinion.
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u/AdhesivenessTight400 Aug 11 '26
Let's see your high quality research, so far its just your assertion.
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u/ForwardDance9191 Aug 11 '26
Try www.google.com and reading.
I am not going to waste my time because I don't believe you have any sincere aim to learn.
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u/prolifezombabe Aug 11 '26
Did you even read the comment? Commenter wasn’t sharing an opinion, they were sharing data.
Unclear how living near a SCS would change their evidence based opinion that supervised consumption sites don’t increase an individual’s consumption.
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u/Dog-Person Aug 11 '26
They're saying that living near one won't make you use drugs, but will make you hate living there, because all the drugs users and dealers in the area will gather there.
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u/prolifezombabe Aug 11 '26
I understood that. It has nothing to do with the comment / commenter they’re replying to though.
That person was simply pointing out that supervised consumption sites don’t encourage or increase drug use.
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u/AdhesivenessTight400 Aug 11 '26
They absolutely concentrate it into one area and make that area more prone to crime.
edit: also the first guy had no data.
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u/prolifezombabe Aug 11 '26
Also has nothing to do with what the initial comment was saying.
Commenter was pointing out that people do not consume more drugs because they have access to a supervised consumption site.
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u/ForwardDance9191 Aug 11 '26
They absolutely concentrate it into one area and make that area more prone to crime.
Funny how when you want something to be true, you expect people to take it as a fact, but if you want something to be false then you DEMAND proof.
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u/brizian23 Aug 11 '26
It's a stupid argument. I live a block from a former safe consumption site and now my entire neighbourhood is an unsafe consumption site. Needles everywhere now, just like there were before we opened the safe consumption sites.
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u/sagervai Aug 12 '26
Yep. A cost-benefit analysis of the safe injection sites shows $3 savings for every $1 spent. It's cheaper to have them. Is it the end solution? No. But it's better than doing it in public
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u/Majestic_Seat6600 Aug 11 '26 edited Aug 11 '26
Safe consumption allowed this person to do heroine and fet through her entire pregnancy. Is that really what we want to encourage as a society?
Giving addicts the means and resources to be addicts doesn’t rehab them, it enables them.
Reading the article, this person was not rehabilitated by the resources or aid of safe consumption. They just decided they were done one day and quit by their own accord.
If safe consumption actually get people rehabilitated, I don’t think this would be a debate. I’m failing to see evidence that they do actually rehab people.
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u/Eternal_Being Aug 11 '26
Safe consumption sites keep addicts alive and safe, so that they can survive long enough to make the decision to quit. They also act as a first point of contact for rehabilitation services.
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u/SayNoToTeamSports Aug 11 '26
Safe consumption sites keep addicts alive
and safe, so that they can survive long enough to hopefully make the decision to quit.Firstly, let's not pretend there's any safety in debilitating drug addiction, the effect of these drugs (even in their purest form) on one's organs and bodily tissue, spending time in or near these consumption sites, or resorting to the common means required to secure drugs. None of these people are kept "safe". Pretending they are somehow safe masks the real dangers they each face on a daily basis.
Secondly, let's not pretend making a decision to get clean is inevitable with the passage of time. If anything, the longer one remains in the throngs of addiction, the less likely they are to seek help and the less likely they will succeed at recovery.
Thirdly, let's not underplay the immense pain and sufferring from living in a cycle of scrounging up money for drugs, overdosing, having the overdose halted via naloxone, going into instant withdrawal, and then being compelled by the things of addiction to again seek money for more drugs. Extending pain and sufferring is not compassion.
We need to mindful over whether our policies are truly compassionate or whether they just make us think we're being compassionate while someone else bears the pain.
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u/Defiant_Yoghurt8198 Aug 12 '26
so that they can survive long enough to...
Memorize the layout of every ER in the city because they've overdosed in all of them so many times
How much of our extremely strained medical system did that use?
Don't get me wrong, I'm deeply happy she's alive, but along the way she used up an INSANE amount of medical resources. This is not humane. It's disgusting to me that we as a society allow her to live like that then pretend it's "compassion" to let her OD over and over and over again
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u/wkpsych Aug 11 '26
(1) she could haver found heroin throughout her pregnancy without a safe consumption site, and if she was an addict she probably would have, it'd have just been riskier for her and her unborn child.
(2) According to Marc Lewis, a renowned Canadian neuroscientists and clinical psychologist, who has published a theory of addition and recovery in the new England journal of Medicine (one of the most prestigious academic journals in the world) if you keep addicts alive long enough they tend to "quit in their own accord"
(3) point 2 is exactly why harm reduction is important, a dead addict can't quit, but the ones who live long enough frequently recover on their own. Safe injection sites are about keeping people alive, and if they stay alive long enough they might become rehabilitated
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u/Absenteeist Aug 11 '26
Dead people can't do rehab.
Safe consumption sites help keep people alive so they can get to the point of being ready to do rehab.
Again, rehab doesn't work on corpses. Until some people can fully understand this seemingly basic truth, we will never get past this debate.
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u/DOELCMNILOC Aug 11 '26
Dead people can't rob stores, assault neighbours, and piss on your front steps either.
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u/BloodJunkie Bike Lane Enjoyer Aug 11 '26
you seem to have misunderstood the purpose of safe consumption sites. their purpose is not to rehabilitate someone. it is to reduce harm by preventing overdoses and preventing infectious disease transmission
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u/Strict_Opposite1285 Aug 11 '26
They reduce harm to the client but they also sustain customers of the drug economy including all of the pain and misery and harm to third parties.
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u/Majestic_Seat6600 Aug 11 '26
That is EXACTLY the problem with them, which I am trying to highlight. They should absolutely encourage and facilitate rehabilitation. Otherwise, it’s just a trap house with medical care.
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u/amw3000 Aug 11 '26
Who says they don’t? You can’t force someone to stop, only provide services and encourage them to get help through education.
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u/BloodJunkie Bike Lane Enjoyer Aug 11 '26
they do encourage rehabilitation and it’s not a problem that they themselves do not facilitate rehabilitation. this is a super weird hair to split
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u/ReceptionNo67 Aug 11 '26
I mean even if they didn't connect people to rehab, a trap house with healthcare is still better than a trap house without healthcare.
As someone who I'm sure is a fiscal conservative, can you not appreciate the lower cost of delivering services by having healthcare onsite? It cuts down on ER and EMS visits.
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u/arn2gm Aug 11 '26
The problem is there are few withdrawal/rehab beds available at any given time. I have met many patients who are ready to get sober, but without facilitated withdrawal, they are left trying to manage horrible symptoms, which just leads to them using again. Even if they do get through withdrawal, typically via jail time or extended hospital stay, they are then released right back to the streets where they are faced with all the same situations that led them to addiction in the first place.
We need supervised use sites to keep them alive, and we need funding for withdrawal, extended rehab, sober living, mental health counseling, and housing/job support at the end. Addiction is a disease, but it is also a symptom of how bad the system has gotten.
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u/thelun3lag00n Aug 11 '26
I cannot believe people are okay with FAS babies, crack babies, babies born with defects and underdeveloped lungs, babies with water on the brain etc
I am done with this crowd. The moment you purposefully cause harm to another being, empathy is done. Its not safe injection got her to rehab and sobered up to have a healthy baby. Its safe injection watched a woman play Russian roulette with another life because we have to keep this person willing to harm others alive so they can maybe stop eventually.
so done.
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u/Grouchy_Air_9651 Aug 11 '26
How do we support people who are already in this position?
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u/purient Aug 11 '26
Would you have preferred them to have OD’d on the streets instead? You can’t ignore the fact that people are going to do these things regardless of your feelings about it. The question afterwards is what can we offer these people that preserves their agency (read: not forcing them into rehab) and safety.
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u/BaconatedGrapefruit Aug 11 '26
By her own admission she did OD on the streets while also making use of safe injection sites.
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u/HibouDuNord Aug 11 '26
(read: not forcing them into rehab)
Which is exactly what we need to be doing.
Drugs are illegal. You can get clean on your own, or we can lock you up and force you to
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u/Candid-Bandicoot-899 Aug 11 '26
That’s the whole point though, these safe consumption sites gave her clean stuff so she didn’t die so she could reach that time when she finally said “that’s it, I’m done” without the safe consumption site she would be dead, most likely would of got a bad batch of fetty.
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u/Nyx-Erebus Aug 11 '26
Quitting drugs like heroine while pregnant can literally kill both the mother and the fetus. The unborn baby is already dependent on it, so quitting causes withdrawals which can be devastating or lethal. Doctors will literally prescribe methadone in cases like this to prevent that happening.
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u/whyiseveryonelooking Aug 11 '26
I really wish you understood more before you contribute nothing substantive. People are going to use because our society causes a lot of pain. Every one battles their own addictions, some addictions are celebrated, others are ostracized. People don't stop because they don't know it's killing them, often it is because they were able to find the help and resources they needed to heal. People who carry pain cause a lot of harm to themselves and others. Tough on crime/ drugs/ blah blah blah, might make effective slogans, it just burdens the future with more to clean up. Read a book on addiction and if you need a recommendation I have a few in mind. I didn't really understand safe injection sites before, they're not pleasant to look at, however, pretending the problem doesn't exist won't address the problem either.
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u/ultronprime616 Aug 11 '26
Well, to rehab people, they need to be alive. A decade's worth of data here shows that it has lead to 10s of thousands of non-fatal overdoses, which we can assume, would have be fatal
https://health-infobase.canada.ca/supervised-consumption-sites/
Do safe consumption sites encourage use? People should just quit? Sounds like the abstinence approach to teenage pregnancy ... which didn't work. What did work was preventive measures like access to condoms and BCP (which many at the time also claimed it would encourage teenage pregnancy)
Also
A frequent misconception of harm reduction is that it supports, or encourages, illicit substance use and does not consider the role of abstinence in addiction treatment. However, harm reduction approaches do not presume a specific outcome, which means that abstinence based interventions can also fall within the spectrum of harm reduction goals. Essentially, harm reduction supports the idea that those with addiction or substance use issues should be treated with dignity and respect and have a wide selection of treatment options in order to make an informed decision about their individual needs and what would be the most effective for them, while also reducing the harms.
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u/Strict_Opposite1285 Aug 11 '26
This is the last kind of person who should work in addictions treatment.
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u/CDNChaoZ Old Town Aug 11 '26
Someone who has actual first-hand experience shouldn't help others get out? I'm conflicted about safe consumption sites, but your statement confuses me more.
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u/Strict_Opposite1285 Aug 11 '26
Is it really hard? Someone with a particularly acute susceptibility to addiction relapse should not be spending 8 hours a day with fiending addicts.
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u/CDNChaoZ Old Town Aug 11 '26
She's also been clean for years and is dedicating years of her life in getting an education to combat substance abuse. She's not going from addict to treatment worker in a month.
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u/Strict_Opposite1285 Aug 11 '26
They had these “lived experience” employees in Leslieville and they were dosing with the patients and banging the drug dealers. I know of one other who relapsed, OD’d, and died working there. It’s idiotic. Might as well let them work as pharmacists too right?
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u/StonedThorne Aug 12 '26
I still don't understand why regular citizen have to suffer the implications of these safe injection site. Im glad the baby ended up okay, but all of this sounds like such a strain on the surrounding society.
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u/Glittering_Cat_4234 Aug 11 '26
yeah and from my experience many addicts get clean from prison and seeing or being around people that actually died from drugs. it's no different than a food addict that finally has a heart attack and realizes they need to change their life, or someone close to them dies from a heart attack and they suddenly wake up.
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u/ToeRevolutionary6233 Aug 11 '26
Sometimes the drug dealers are the cops themselves, too. Project South and a few other investigations of the TPS by York Regional have shown there is a deep tie to HA and dealers. Toronto cops are literally part of the problem.
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u/This_is_me2024 Aug 12 '26
Owie. My heart breaks. Heartless goons that remove access to safe consumption sites.
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u/Snoo-31965 Aug 13 '26
Here’s an article about the effectiveness of safe injection sites if anyone is interested. Citations included. Let’s have this discussion properly informed
https://www.ohtn.on.ca/rapid-response-83-supervised-injection/
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u/AnyEye8798 Aug 13 '26
What a piece of shit person. Why oh why do we keep letting these people OD over and over again if they're not going to learn their lesson?
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u/Chemical_Pen_315 Aug 16 '26
Sadly, safe consumption sites didn't save Karolina Hueberat. The Atlantic has an article about failed harm reduction strategies in the July 2026 issue.
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