Neighbourhoods like the Downtown Eastside don’t happen by accident. Every community across Canada has addiction problems, but it’s only through years of poor planning that an out-of-control disaster like Vancouver’s starts to develop.
It is a noble and moral thing to prevent addicts from dying of overdoses in alleys and dingy apartments, and none of the problems cited above are reasons to not build a safe injection site. But it is perverse to look at the Downtown Eastside and claim that it is in any way a holistic success. It is palliative care on a mass scale; a system that can keep hearts from stopping, but little else.
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