Canada - Ontario to keep funding supervised drug consumption sites

[S.J.B.]

Ontario to keep funding supervised drug consumption sites, health minister says
Kate Dubinski
CBC
October 22nd, 2018

Ontario will keep funding supervised drug consumption sites, but their focus will change to help users receive treatment and get rehabilitated, Health Minister Christine Elliott said Monday morning.

Existing sites will also have to reapply to continue operating, Elliott said.

"While critical, simply preventing overdoses is not enough. We need longer-term solutions to this problem," she said about the reason behind rebranding the sites to focus on consumption and treatment services.

"Lives are being lost every day, and opioid addiction, if left unchecked, creates a new burden on our health-care system.

"We don't truly save a person's life until they are free of addiction."

Read the full story here.

 

[cj]

This won't work. People will just stop going to the places.

 

[spacejunk]

yeah, sadly you are probably right.
it's sad that they're seemingly being pressure to push a "recovery" agenda, rather than just HR.
i hate it when politics affect the quality of medical services for the purpose of pushing some ideology or agenda.

 

[S.J.B.]

This won't work. People will just stop going to the places.

I think the "change of focus" is more rhetorical than anything. The story states that "most existing sites already comply with the new model." Presumably the sites will have to have the ability to refer to treatment, some sort of documentation on treatment, or something in that vein. If most of the sites are already in compliance with this, I'm sure that people will be able to come in and use them without having treatment forced on them.

This is a big victory, as the incoming conservative government in Ontario looked poised to eliminate funding for these sites. It really says something about how far the public's acceptance of supervised injection sites has come in the past few years in Canada.