Health experts bristle as Poilievre pledges drug consumption site restrictions

published on July 12, 2024 by Martin MacMahon in CTV News Vancouver

Ratcheting up the rhetoric amid a toxic drug crisis which has claimed the lives of thousands of people over the last decade, Federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says he would cancel federal funding for drug consumption sites.

He also says he’d shut down any sites where he claims they endanger the public – highlighting sites near schools or playgrounds.

“They’re drug dens,” Poilievre said during a news conference in Montreal on Friday, before repeating himself for emphasis. “They’re drug dens. And they’ve made everything worse. Everywhere they’ve been done they’ve made everything worse.”

But experts who’ve studied drug consumption sites like Insite in Vancouver dispute that claim.

“We used data from the B.C. coroner from about the three years before and the three years after the Insite facility opened,” said M-J Milloy, an assistant professor with the University of British Columbia’s Department of Medicine – pointing to research he conducted a number of years ago. “And in our study, we found that after the facility opened, there was a 35 per cent decrease in rates of fatal overdose around the facility compared to rates further away from the facility.”…