[National Post] Safe-injection sites on way, critics fear

Pendant ce temps, à Toronto, beaucoup de travail reste à faire au sujet des services d'injection supervisée, notamment auprès des élus municipaux...

Michael McKiernan, National Post
Published: Thursday, August 13, 2009

A city-sanctioned study is looking into the feasibility of Vancouver-style safe-injection sites in Toronto, but critics fear the study's support for such sites is a done deal.

The study, part of Toronto Public Health's drug strategy, comes as Vancouver's six-year-old InSite program faces increasing doubts over its own future. The federal government wants it shut and has appealed a 2008 B. C. Supreme Court ruling that allowed it to continue operating.

"It's getting pushed out of Vancouver and they want to move the problem somewhere else, but we don't want it here," said Rob Ford, city councillor for Etobicoke North. "My residents don't want it, I don't want it and I'll do everything in my power to stop it. Who's going to want to live in a community that's invaded every day and night by drug users?"

Although commissioned under the city's Toronto Drug Strategy, the funding for the study has come from the Ontario HIV Treatment Network, an independent nonprofit organization.

Mr. Ford led opponents of the controversial drug strategy when councillors passed it in December 2005.

"You don't condone and enable drug use -- it's illegal. How can you say you're helping people when you're enabling them?"

Article complet ici.