by CAA | Aug 24, 2024 | Illicit Drugs, Library, Safe Injecting Rooms
CAA
The CAA has long promoted a similar scenario for this state, arguing that kicking those suffering substance abuse or any impairment that removes their acuity to manage themselves into the gutter and walk away is effectively what we are doing in this State and is a disgusting treatment and disrespect for human life.
The drug apologists try to falsely claim the moral high ground, claiming that Harm Minimisation saves lives. How does facilitating the pumping of some questionable drug into an addict’s veins help the addict? It may be okay for them today, but what about tomorrow?
We aggravate the situation by creating an alleged safe injecting room that does nothing to address the issues of the user. How perpetuating the adverse effect that drugs have on people by providing government support in the furtherance of their addiction or risk-taking is incomprehensible.
We can learn a lot from Ontario; they have been there and are now plotting a way back.
Ontario’s decision to close safe consumption sites near schools and daycares comes in the wake of a bystander’s death and class-action lawsuit.
By Alexandra Keeler
In a dramatic shift in policy, Ontario is closing 10 safe consumption sites located near schools and daycares, citing public safety concerns.
“Our first priority must always be protecting our communities, especially when it comes to our most innocent and vulnerable — our children,” said Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones at an Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference in Ottawa on Tuesday.
Safe consumption sites, which enable people to use illicit drugs with sterile equipment under staff supervision, will be prohibited from operating within 200 metres of schools and child-care centres after March 31, 2025.
The province also plans to introduce legislation to prevent municipalities from establishing new consumption sites, requesting the decriminalization of illegal drugs or participating in federal safe supply initiatives, a health ministry press release says.
Safe consumption sites have faced mounting scrutiny in the wake of community feedback highlighting their effect on public safety.
“We’ve noticed a real change from 2021 onwards,” Andrea Nickel, a parent who lives near a safe consumption site at Toronto’s South Riverdale Community Health Centre, told Canadian Affairs in May.
“At the beginning of last year it just escalated out of control.”
Unacceptable danger
Ontario opened its first safe consumption site in 2017 with the aim of reducing overdose deaths and providing users with a gateway to treatment. Today, there are 23 safe consumption sites across the province, 17 of which are provincially funded.
KeepSIX, the safe consumption site in South Riverdale, is among the sites facing closure. Last July, Karolina Huebner-Makurat, a local resident and mother of two, was fatally shot during a gunfight outside the site. Her death prompted Ontario to conduct two reviews of the centre and to also review the 16 other provincially funded sites.
A review of keepSIX conducted by the hospital network Unity Health Toronto and released in February recommended improvements in security, community relations, law enforcement communication and staff training. It did not recommend closure.
Drugs found by a child in the South Riverdale neighbourhood. (Photo provided by Andrea Nickel.)
The second review, released in April and conducted by former health-care executive Jill Campbell, also opposed closure. It advocated instead for expanded harm reduction and treatment, enhanced security and increased mental health support.
In March 2024, two South Riverdale residents launched a class-action lawsuit against the operator of keepSIX and all levels of government, Canadian Affairs reported in May. The lawsuit alleges the site has exposed the community to unacceptable danger.
The site’s proximity to daycares and schools and its role in exposing children to illicit drugs and used needles are at the heart of that case.
Reacting to this week’s announcement, South Riverdale parent Andrea Nickel said she is supportive of the site’s services. “[But] it is not unreasonable to ask that they are balanced with community safety, specifically kids’ safety.”
South Riverdale’s response cited the centre’s role in reversing 74 overdoses in 2023.
“Every overdose reversed is a life saved,” Anne Marie Aikins, a public affairs consultant at AMA Communications, said on behalf of the centre.
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‘Devil’s in the details’
In Tuesday’s address, Ontario’s health minister also announced a $378-million investment to establish 19 new Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment Hubs (HART hubs) across the province. These recovery-focused hubs will offer social support services and employment assistance to individuals struggling with addiction.
They will not provide supervised drug consumption, needle exchange programs or the “safe supply” of prescribed controlled substances.
“The devil’s in the details with these things,” said John-Paul Michael, an addictions case manager in Toronto who has extensive experience in harm reduction and lived experience with substance use.
“Everyone I know in the harm-reduction community is very much in favour of having better access to treatment, better access to detox, better wraparound care,” he said. “The problem becomes when it is at the expense of other evidence-based care.”
Michael says safe consumption sites are often the only form of health care available to individuals struggling with addiction. Eliminating them would leave these individuals without support, he says.
“Safe consumption sites are essential for saving lives, particularly for those who may never seek formal treatment,” he said. “Eliminating these supports disregards the value of human life.”
Michael is also concerned about the reduction of needle exchange services, which are crucial for managing HIV and Hepatitis C rates and lessening the burden on emergency rooms.
“Community-based nurses at [safe consumption sites] provide basic care that can prevent emergency department visits and potentially severe outcomes, such as [intensive care unit] stays,” Michael said.
The province will soon seek proposals to establish up to 10 HART hubs. Priority will be given to proposals that aim to transition existing safe consumption sites — especially those facing closure — into HART hubs.
“[T]he likelihood is that [these transitions] would happen very quickly,” Health Minister Jones told reporters on Tuesday. “The other applications — it will depend on what they bring forward.”
Linda B.
I’m not sure when the “ helping community” is going to get it through their heads that helping people stay addicted is not helping them. When addicts have their substance of choice freely available and someone to make sure they don’t die, what possible reason would they have for doing the hard work of getting clean? Users are interested in one thing above health, family, even food: the next dose.
by CAA | Mar 8, 2024 | Illicit Drugs, Library, Safe Injecting Rooms, Victoria Police Issues
The long-awaited report by former Police Commissioner Ken Lay into the possible location of another Safe injecting room for the CBD is now moot, having not seen the light of day.
There is now overwhelming evidence that the purpose of the facility, Called MSIR, to care for drug addicts has failed, and more addicts die as a result of the existence and function of the facility than happens without it.
An eighteen-month analysis of the MSIR overdose rates makes for a compelling read and reality check.
Not only is the facility an abject failure operationally, but the community impact has failed to be considered, and many of the locals and residents have been forced to live in a twilight of fear. Their crime is that they are unfortunate enough to happen to live in an area where the Government has placed the MSIR.
The two reasons alone that should force the Government to close the facility are:
- MSIR failure to perform its intended function. Intended to reduce the death rate of addicts, the MSIR overdose rates are 23.5/1000 or 102 times higher than the Sydney Medically Supervised Injecting Centre (MSIC); the MSIR doesn’t work and must be immediately closed to save the lives of addicts.
See PDF for more detail: Analysis of the Melbourne MedicallySupervised Injecting Room’s heroin overdose rates in its first 18 months.
Yes, you guessed it; the MSIR does not save lives and has not reduced the death rate of addicts but increased it. Not to mention providing the drug trade with a focal point for trading akin to a market.
2. The suffering inflicted on the residents is beyond comprehension for a failed social experiment. The MSIR is a magnet and has become the epicentre of the illicit street drug trade in Victoria, with addicts all over the state travelling to the MSIR not necessarily to use the facility but to access the rampant drug trade.
The addicts, having driven to the site to access drugs, do not drive home sober but pull up not far from the MSIR to consume their purchase before heading back from where they came. Metaphorically enjoying the trip.
That many of them drive to and from should be of enormous concern for the wider safety of the State.
The horror that the residents must endure is best illustrated by their experiences on March 6, 2024.
What long-term damage is caused to those 12-year-olds as drug apologists work to normalise Drug addiction? There are constant and terrifying stories that have become so regular the government dismisses them as a small number of disgruntled anti-drug locals intent on discrediting social advancement.
The objections to the injecting room concept are based in fact and will eventually force a rethink by the Government.
Let’s hope it is done before a local ends up the same way, as many of the addicts who use the facility – dead.
Or perhaps worse, there is an upsurge in young people being hooked on drugs because that behaviour is what they have grown up within a neighbourhood where the scourge has been normalised by the government.
The MSIR must be closed now; enough damage has been wrought, and there are alternatives.
by CAA | Jan 14, 2024 | Illicit Drugs, Investigations, Library, Safe Injecting Rooms
Although this man appears severely drug-affected, nevertheless, he has become a victim, and this victim deserves the protection of the law without judgment. He was ushered onto the road allegedly by the staff of the North Richmond Medically Supervised Injecting Room (MSIR).
Police, however, seemingly have new investigative techniques.
There is apparently no need to interview witnesses or make decisions based on the facts; in other words, there is no need to conduct an investigation, as it was traditionally called, and they can make arbitrary decisions based on nothing much.
A sceptic may speculate that the investigation was knobbled or that the Police want to avoid any complex work.
But perhaps what the victim is, had a significant bearing.
Maybe the basic police philosophy of executing the law without fear or favour is obsolete.
Perhaps because the Victim is a very heavy drug user, it is not worth their effort?
As much as we despise illicit drugs and their use, we equally detest any action that would further harm addicts, including facilitating their addiction, as the MSIR does, but in this case, the matter goes to a whole new low in the care of addicts.
The incident shows the victim being escorted from the MSIR precinct out onto busy Lenox Street Richmond, effectively ‘playing Russian Roulette’ with the traffic. The only reason the victim was not injured or killed was the responsible drivers of the vehicles at the time.
It was more luck than good judgment that a large commercial vehicle didn’t happen along at that moment as the outcome could have been disastrously different.
The CAA reported this serious criminal offence, Conduct Endangering Life, to the Chief Commissioner’s Office and subsequently to a senior police detective.
The offence reported was.
‘A person must not recklessly engage in conduct that places or may place another person in danger of death (Crimes Act 1958 s22).
–Judicial College of Victoria:
This particular incident was substantially aggravated because the perpetrators were identified by witnesses to be allegedly employees/staff of the Richmond North Medically Supervised Injecting Room (MSIR), who would be well aware of the risk posed to the victim and have an elevated ‘duty of care’ for the victim, above the average person.
Although there is a legislated level of protection within the MSIR, if the victim used the MSIR to get into that state, it was, perhaps, negligent or deliberate indifference by the staff medically supervising the victim, which may negate protection. A matter that should be investigated.
Of further interest is whether the staff leading the victim onto the road acted on instructions. It would be gross negligence to instruct staff, knowing their actions could be illegal, as there is no protection for workers outside the MSIR. This aspect must be investigated.
Apart from the legal aspects, this behaviour by the MSIR is reprehensible in that, as a direct result of their actions, they placed the victim back in the community, which ultimately, Police and emergency services will have to deal with. All because the MSIR abrogated their moral and perhaps legal responsibility to the victim.
Alleged MSIR Staff is escorting the victim – more alleged MSIR Staff following- Witnesses to the event.
On the day following the reporting of this crime, we were contacted to say there would be no action as a prosecution would not be likely to succeed.
How these detectives formed that opinion without interviewing the potential witnesses, a process called an investigation, is beyond us.
Why up to five persons allegedly from the MSIR were not formally interviewed is staggering, let alone the many witnesses that appeared on the CCTV footage. Pedestrians’ and drivers’ vehicle registration details were available from the footage.
Before lodging the report, we asked several retired, experienced detectives to view footage of the incident we had obtained.
Their view of the circumstance was unanimous; there is an unambiguous ‘prima facia’ case of Conduct Endangering Life by three to four individuals, and the matter must be thoroughly investigated. The likelihood of a successful prosecution was optimistic.
By the actions of these individuals, it was clear the drug-affected person was being ejected from the MSIR vicinity, which happens to be a public place, and they have no power to do this.
The key to this ejection was the state of the addict, who was not in control of his actions and rational thought, something the people concerned were the MSIR staff would be aware of.
The offence of endangering life has several elements, as the Victorian Judicial College describes.
This offence has the following five elements:
- The accused engaged in conduct;
- The accused’s conduct was voluntary;
- The accused’s conduct endangered another person’s life;
- The accused acted recklessly; and
- The accused acted without lawful authority or excuse (R v Nuri [1990] VR 641; Filmer v Barclay [1994] 2 VR 269; Mutemeri v Cheesman [1998] 4 VR 484; R v Wilson [2005] VSCA 78; R v Abdul-Rasool (2008) 18 VR 586; R v Marijancevic (2009) 22 VR 576).
Central to any investigation would be establishing the identity of those involved.
In this incident, given the quality of the evidence from the CCTV, the five elements would seem clear-cut, so how did the detectives decide that no offence was determined within a few hours (overnight)?
This matter must now be investigated by a competent, independent investigation team led by an experienced Officer above the rank of the original team. Essentially, that independence must extend to the MSIR, which we understand has a close working relationship with local Police. An investigation must be conducted in a manner to avoid bias.
The new investigation must not be established to determine that no offence was committed; unfortunately, often, the police response to critiques of their work, and investigators must prepare a brief of properly collated evidence to evaluate the circumstances and the facts accurately.
The actions of the allegedly MSIR staff, apart from being recklessly criminal, if involved, were a shocking breach of their ‘duty of care’ and finally exposed the reckless indifference the facility employs towards drug users.
The MSIR is a facility purely for the furtherance of drug use, as demonstrated in this incident. This victim may have even achieved his state in the facility, indicating that the ethos of the facility is devoid of any ‘duty of care’.
