To the editor,
Re: Safe consumption will require social licence, Opinion, April 10.
The problem I have with the safe injection site can be likened to asking people who are addicted to cigarettes to walk several blocks to smoke.
The homeless issue, the drug issue is not new. What is new is the number of people that are dying because they thought their street drug of choice was safe. Is it now time to make all these drugs legal and available through government-run pharmacies?
We have also dumped those who cannot pay onto the street in favour of those who can when it comes to affordable homes.
There is a lot of rhetoric and false or misinformation about these issues pitting one group against the other. Nanaimo, as with every other municipality, will be asked each year to commit more and more from their tax base to support social initiatives. This will result in increased taxes or an erosion of services.
Downtown is not that bad. If there were more positive users of the space, you would not see the negative users. The one solution that will work is education and understanding. There are silos upon silos each shutting the other out, or each looking for funding for their own unique cause.
I will leave you with this thought. What is happening now is not unique to downtown, Nanaimo or even this country. But, for many, it is unique to them so they want it pushed to the next block, park, schoolyard, neighbourhood or city.
There is a rat experiment that suggests that if we help take away the need for self-medication by changing the environment, then people would not choose the drug But, others say opioid addictions is a condition requiring substitution therapy.
Have we all become our own large test subjects?
Rick Hyne, Nanaimo
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