BarrieToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter is in response to 'LETTER: Money would be better spent on drug rehab centre versus SCS,' published on Feb. 12.
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I read a recent letter from a Barrie resident who is not in favour of a safe consumption site (SCS). I understand the initial reluctance some residents may feel, but they should actually look at statistics and understand the benefits before making an uninformed decision.
The letter contained a lot of inaccurate information and none of it was backed up by any proof, although the author did allude to situations in other cities.
SCSs help prevent overdose. That is their main purpose. It is giving people who use drugs the option to use in a safe environment where they will be supervised. Staff will help individuals with basic first-aid, build trusting relationships with people who access the site while introducing other services that people may interested in accessing.
Additionally, safe consumption sites have a net positive result on the communities in which they reside. SCSs have been shown to decrease drug-related crime (Wood et al., 2006; Broadhead et al., 2002; Dovey et al. 2001), decrease the volume of publicly discarded syringes and injection-related litter (Wood et al., 2006; Broadhead et al., 2002; Dovey et al. 2001) decrease rates of public drug use (Wood et al., 2006; Broadhead et al., 2002; Dovey et al. 2001), and decrease the number of suspected drug dealers and over-sedated individuals in public (León et al., 2018).
This increases health and safety for both the individuals injecting drugs as well as the surrounding community members, and increases the perceived safety and value of the area of the SCS.
Researchers have studied safe consumption sites for efficacy in three primary areas:
1. Reducing individuals’ physical harms associated with drug use, such as the spread of HIV and hepatitis C, infections, and overdose.
2. Reducing social harms associated with drug use, such as publicly discarded syringes and injection related litter, public crime, public drug use, and public overdose.
3. Cost-effectiveness as compared to other similarly effective interventions and the price of tertiary treatment and prevention.
Nearly every study on supervised injection facilities recommends the intervention for areas where drug use is prevalent.
From the body of evidence, the advantage of SCSs should be heavily considered when a community is trying to prevent the harms associated with drug use.
The previous two paragraphs have been copied from The Impact of Safe Consumption Sites: Physical and Social Harm Reduction and Economic Efficacy by MaryGrace Lewis.
James Moreau
Midhurst
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