From Fashionable To Fatal: The Folly Of “Safe” Injection Sites

If you asked taxpayers to name a uniquely 21st-century policy fad no doubt many would point to the rise of safe injection sites. The idea of safe injection sites has been almost exclusively pushed by activists who have seemingly been given free rein to meddle with drug addiction policy on the back of their high-minded intentions alone. 

Based on all the promises made by the drug decriminalization activists and the self-appointed “experts” that support the establishment of safe injection sites you would have to expect a province like British Columbia to have its drug/opioid problems in the rearview mirror, but the exact opposite has been found.

Safe injection sites have definitely not helped problems in Alberta, Saskatchewan, or Ontario, but those provinces can be hand-waved away by activists for not having enough sites throughout the province. BC on the other hand is replete with them and unsurprisingly has a runaway drug problem.

Between 2015 and 2022 emergency services calls related to drug overdoses increased from 12,263 to 33,664 (the later numbers are skewed downward due to injection sites not needing to call the emergency services). One can try and blame outside factors being responsible for the perpetual climb upward in drug overdoses, but that would only further implicate the uselessness of the government trying to safely maintain the addictions of its citizens. 

If you take a step back you realize that safe injection sites were never designed to deal with a drug crisis, rather it was part of the modern push to “de-stigmatize” certain behaviours. The first safe injection site in BC was the Insite centre opened in 2003 in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. 

It should be noted that in BC in 2003 overdose deaths were at a near all-time low (190 deaths) thanks to tough-on-crime policies that dissuaded the sale and use of drugs. As of 2022 drug deaths are screamingly high at a raw total of 1827, nearly ten times more deaths than in 2003. 

Safe injection sites were not an idea born from a real crisis, but an imagined crisis that allowed activists to implement their vision of reorienting society’s view of drug users from perpetrators of harm against themselves and others to mere victims of circumstance. It may be a more “compassionate” view but it is also counterproductive.

And before someone blames current issues on the entrance of fentanyl into the illicit drug market; who were the ones attempting to “de-stigmatize” and decriminalize the use of drugs, provide free “clean” drugs, and build safety nets for those who used drugs right before the fentanyl crisis hit? Oh yeah, it was the activists.  

Before the fentanyl crisis started in 2013, yearly drug deaths had already doubled the 2003 figures which reflected that a far larger portion of the population had begun using drugs creating a lot of easy targets for drug dealers pushing fentanyl-laced products. 

Even if we are to pretend safe injection sites are not part of the increased drug problem across Canada, at the very least they have not helped. For all the rhetoric about “harm reduction,” all we have really done is lowered the perceived risk of drug usage on paper. We are maintaining drug users in effectively a zombified state to overdose 3 to 6 times in the comfort of an injection site’s lobby before passing instead of just 1 or 2 times on the streets or at home. 

Activists pivot and try claiming that at least the safe injection sites are helping get needles off the street with their “clean needle exchange” programs which allow addicts to exchange used needles for new needles. In reality, anyone who walks around downtown Vancouver can confirm very little handing-in of spent needles is taking place.

The tragic thing is that there used to be far more sensibility regarding drug addiction than there is now. Although the ‘Just Say No’ zero-tolerance stances of Ronald and Nancy Reagan may be derided today as being “simplistic” or “out-of-touch” the common wisdom of their positions should be obvious from the perspective of the mess we are in today. 

Safe injection sites are such an obviously stupid idea that even California uber-progressive Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill from the state legislature that would have enabled some cities and counties to operate injection sites citing the risk of worsening the drug crisis his state is facing.

If drug usage is a problem (which the activists may in fact disagree with) then it needs to be treated as a problem. You try to eliminate problems, you don’t just sanitize them with the more attractive backdrop of a safe injection site. 

Regrettably, in BC, it seems that the problem won’t be getting much better anytime soon. New local leadership like Vancouver’s Mayor Ken Sims wants to crack down on drug crime, but will likely be hamstrung by Premier David Eby, a product of the activist set. Eby is already moving to decriminalize harder drugs and promoting more resources for safe injection sites, believing that the failed policies of the past can be made to work with more resources thrown at them. 

At the end of the day, Canada’s drug problems will always be inextricably linked with crime, and if we stop taking law enforcement seriously then we will see massive spikes in drug usage. No amount of free clean needles or testing of addicts’ drugs will help solve the problem, just take a look at British Columbia.