Minutes before councillors gave their unanimous blessing to a supervised injection site for illegal drugs in downtown Hamilton, Mayor Fred Eisenberger pumped them with praise for showing "great leadership" on the issue.

"You know what, if we were to do a poll on this, I'd be willing to bet that the community at large would say 'no' because they don't understand the entire complexity of what we're dealing with," Eisenberger said.

"That's why we are the leaders in the community that gets to understand the full picture and the benefits and what we're trying to prevent and who we're trying to help."

In point of fact, the city did an online community survey last year and of 1,690 respondents, 84 per cent said they supported a supervised injection site (SIS). But clearly Eisenberger believes a scientifically-based opinion poll would deliver a radically different result.

Maybe he's right.

There's no question the overwhelming weight of expert opinion supports SISs. They've been shown to reduce drug overdoses, the spread of infectious diseases through shared needles, and drug litter in public places. On top of that, they also serve to connect addicts to treatment and other health services.

But what Eisenberger probably intuits is that many people just can't shake the queasy feeling that sanctioning them is akin to condoning or at least enabling illegal drug use.

A publicly funded injection site seems not only to free hard drug use from societal censure, it actually empowers addicts to continue using dangerous opioids acquired through direct or indirect criminal activity.

There's also another morally suspect side to the equation: SISs may facilitate negative impacts on the neighbourhoods where they're located. Councillors were given a taste of what the downtown might expect courtesy of Hamilton deputy police chief Dan Kinsella.

According to Kinsella, he spent three days last May with Vancouver police patrolling the neighbourhood around the Insite supervised injection site in downtown eastside Vancouver. Insite is the first legal SIS in Canada. It opened in 2003.

Kinsella prefaced his remarks by stating that from a harm reduction point of view, a SIS is a "good thing." But he said he was "duty bound" to make councillors aware of several concerns, which have the potential to negatively impact quality of life and community safety.

Kinsella noted that drug pushers tend to hover around SISs in search of addicts, which Hamilton police will need to develop tactics to deal with. People need money to buy drugs and to get it some turn to criminal activity such as breaking into cars to steal things.

Hamilton, Kinsella pointed out, has a car break-in program called "Lock it or lose it." But in Vancouver, the philosophy is if you park in certain areas you should leave your cars doors unlocked with nothing of value inside to prevent the windows from being smashed.

Kinsella also warned that the location of the SIS is "exceedingly important." He says over the years, neighbourhoods in the Insite area have deteriorated

"It's strewn with people sitting on sidewalks doing drugs openly, those kinds of things."

Coun. Arlene VanderBeek said she also toured the area and experienced the same things Kinsella saw. "The windows are all boarded up in the neighbourhood. There is no business going on. Buildings are for sale."

Ultimately, according to Kinsella, police will have to carefully monitor the changing circumstances. Kinsella says he anticipates that down the road, police service calls for dealing with suspicious persons, car break-ins, loitering and overdoses will go up.

"Generally speaking, I'm just letting you know that around those sites robberies, car entries and those kinds of things will increase as time goes on. I'm not talking tomorrow; I'm not talking six months into this program; I'm maybe not even talking a year. It didn't immediately happen in Vancouver; it happened over a period of time."

Whatever your opinion of supervised injections sites, Kinsella's account should be seen as a slice of the "full picture" Eisenberger alluded too. After all, forewarned is forearmed.