Premier must keep his promise on supervised consumption site — but it won’t be easy

Many people know the speech from the throne — the government of the day’s agenda, delivered by the lieutenant governor as part of the ceremony to open a new session of a legislature — is all pomp, circumstance and marketing talk.

In that context, how should we judge Premier Wab Kinew’s pledge to finally open a supervised drug consumption site in downtown Winnipeg sometime in January? After two years of delays, it’s fair to ask if this is a promise he can finally keep.

The best answer, at the moment, is that he will. But it’s not necessarily going to be easy.

The Kinew government failed to get a site up and running last year in a building it owns at 200 Disraeli Fwy., when the proposed location was deemed inappropriate by some residents in Point Douglas and the Exchange District. Kinew has promised a new location — as yet unidentified — that will satisfy those concerns.

It all seems simple enough until you realize Kinew will have to, once again, consult residents. While consultation is a key tenet of any legitimate democracy, it’s also risky business for a government proposing bold or controversial ideas.

Public consultations are, by their very nature, fraught and messy. They serve as forums for the hyper-aggrieved to vent at a volume that often drowns out more thoughtful opinions. Consultation works best when it serves as a source of ideas on how to improve something, not as an accurate measurement of public opinion or a veto.

The public already has a veto. It’s called an election.

After getting stomped the first time around, how should the Kinew government proceed with its second proposal for a supervised consumption site? The location — when publicly identified — will be a key factor; Kinew has said only that it will be somewhere in Point Douglas-Exchange District neighbourhood.

As it should be.

Supervised consumption and detox facilities do not make surrounding neighbourhoods unsafe; they make them safer and cleaner.

Although it serves as an inconvenient truth for the champions of gentrification, the area at issue is not only ground zero for the homeless and addicted, it is already the principal hub for agencies that support them. It’s why the province has also announced it will open a 72-hour detox centre in the same building on Disraeli Freeway where the government initially wanted to open the supervised consumption site.

It is the right place that will ensure the greatest level of success.

The argument that fuelled residents’ opposition to the original proposal for the Disraeli building — that it was too close to schools and daycares — is, simply, flawed. Supervised consumption and detox facilities do not make surrounding neighbourhoods unsafe; they make them safer and cleaner.

Legitimate social science on this point is unambiguous: provide a safe place for people to test and use drugs and get primary health care, and you not only have fewer overdose deaths but less open drug use and discarded paraphernalia littering surrounding streets. Studies in cities such as Toronto and Vancouver have also shown a decline in street crime and vandalism.

That may seem counterintuitive to some critics. If they stopped to consider what these facilities are designed to do, the logic would become abundantly clear.

If the problem is open drug use and random street crime, then supervised consumption is arguably the best possible response.

A supervised consumption facility offers addicts a place to get their drugs tested for the presence of toxic and life-threatening substances, and medical supervision to ensure that when they use those drugs, they do not overdose.

The facility also provides direct-line primary health care and referrals to addictions treatment.

The Progressive Conservatives have long argued for more intensive treatment of drug addiction rather than supervised consumption. They, and the squeaky wheels in the neighbourhood surrounding the building at 200 Disraeli Fwy. who parroted the same talking point, should ask themselves where people suffering from substance abuse are supposed to access treatment.

Do we want people overdosing on sidewalks? Do we really think it’s better to wait until addicts need to be transported, at enormous taxpayer expense, to a hospital emergency room? Is it their belief that hospital ERs, as completely overwhelmed as they are, are the best places to connect addicts with detox and mental-health programs?

That is more or less the system we have now and it’s been a colossal failure.

People suffering from overdoses and other serious medical conditions brought on by substance abuse are consuming enormous amounts of human and physical resources from the health-care system. We spend so much money rescuing, transporting and treating addicts that, lamentably, there isn’t enough money left for the treatment that so many people claim they want to make available.

It’s an inhumane and hilariously ineffective way of dealing with one of the biggest health and public-safety problems we face today.

The NDP government must consult on the soon-to-be-revealed location for the safe consumption site to give people on both sides of the issue an opportunity to speak their minds. And government should use what they hear to assuage concerns and make what is undoubtedly a good idea better.

But if Kinew is convinced that safe consumption is the right thing to do, and downtown is the right place to do it, he needs to get it done.

dan.lett@winnipegfreepress.com