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As someone who lives near one...
- They do cut down on paraphenalia waste, though since people can't use inhalable drugs, crack pipes are everywhere and anything that can be set on fire is often set on fire
- Yes, they attract people, but not nearly as much as the drug dealers that pitch tents and sell out of them. Portable drug dens, not SI/SC sites, are a serious problem
As with everything related to drug policy in Canada, we did the cheap half: provide precarious funding to a handful of under-resourced services and don't give them legislative freedom to do the job correctly.
If you wanted this to work:
- Allow inhalables
- Don't allow consumption off site. At all. Drugs get confiscated if you try to leave with them, and they're confiscated if you're using in, eg, a public park.
- On that note, get police to do their fucking jobs, get out of their cruisers, and maybe enforce a law or two? Like, we have an SC site, and we have shelter space, but apparently that's hard work and it's easier to just let addicts deal drugs and swap stolen property all day, for months.
- Housing. Holy fucking shit, we need housing. Nothing, and I mean nothing, breeds crime like drug addicts tenting.
- While we're on tents, I could really stop with suburban NIMBY do-gooders bringing addicts food and new tents. There's a food bank and several shelters in the area, drop the food there. If you're so keen to let them tent, offer them space in your backyard, not in the few green spaces that downtown residents can no longer use because addicts wreck them
(side note: I've seen the very same people who do the donation run protest about SCS sites and pop-up/tiny-homes outside of specific areas of downtown. They're up for doing a Timmy's run and getting their church to buy a tent, but no addicts in the suburbs, please & thanks)
I get why Ford has the support to do this. A lot of people, especially people who live in small Ontario towns and cities, are absolutely sick of addicts ruining things for everyone. Of course, Ford won't do the right thing, because the right thing costs money, which is why we're here. It won't fix the problem, but like everything Ford does, it seems like he's taking action if you don't look too closely.
Plus, the operating budgets for these can be given the developers; win-win for Ford.