EDMONTON—When North America’s first supervised consumption site opened in Vancouver, there was a line of protesters denouncing the initiative. They argued that these sites would lead to increased drug use and disorder.

The early days were difficult, with the evidence supporting the sites being unclear and the legality of such sites reaching the Supreme Court of Canada. Fifteen years later, despite evidence supporting supervised consumption sites now clear, the debate still rages, with prominent citizens opposing the sites.

When Edmonton’s first sites opened earlier this year, the debate moved east.

It reared its head in our city again this past week when National Post columnist Tristin Hopper found a used needle in his yard. He took a photo, and posted a thread on Twitter that condemned nearby supervised consumption sites. He argued the sites had led to an increase in drug use and “disorder.”

The thread gained major attention and drew supporters, including pundits, policy-makers, ordinary citizens, and even the leader of the United Conservative Party, Jason Kenney, who said it is the residents who “have to live with the consequences” of these sites.

The reaction to the photo hit home for me. It wasn’t the suggestion that overdoses and exposed needles are a problem, but the idea that some communities are filled with “disorder” and that services like supervised consumption sites somehow increase problems in these communities. In addition, it leads people like Hopper — who moved to his neighbourhood three years ago — to assume that problems in these areas are somehow new.

Edmonton’s supervised consumption sites are clustered in core areas, such as McCauley, Boyle Street, and near Kingsway. When it comes to supervised consumption sites, these are the communities that get labelled as “bad areas” needing stringent enforcement.

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What is often forgotten is that these are communities like any other in Edmonton. They have a strong sense of culture and spirit. Yes, they also have their demons, but there is no evidence that these sites increase crime in the neighbourhoods where they are located.

In fact, in 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled 9-0 against the federal government’s attempts to shut down a supervised consumption site in Vancouver. In the unanimous ruling, it said, “Insite has proven to save lives with no discernible negative impact on the public safety and health objectives of Canada.” Instead of creating disorder, the sites in Edmonton are saving lives. In an interview with Global News, Access to Medically Supervised Injection Services Edmonton (AMSISE), the organization that created the model for the four sites in the city, said since March 2018, there have been 932 unique visitors, with a total of 22,316 visits. Staff have reversed 252 overdoses.

I grew up in what was called a “bad area.” I’ve lived in McCauley — a mature neighbourhood near a supervised consumption site, close to where the needle in the photo was found — and also in Dickinsfield, a cluster of social housing on the north side. Anyone from Edmonton knows the stereotype that these areas are dangerous and filled with crime.

However, for me, this was home. When citizens, politicians and pundits think about my home, they often forget that these are — and always have been — vibrant communities. It’s where we played as kids, where I learned to ride my first bike.

Tragedies did happen far too often. No one who lived in these areas would deny that problems existed. However, these places are near and dear to my heart. I still consider them my home.

Many of us did not choose to live in those areas. Some of us had low income, recently came to Canada or had our housing applications denied. We did not have the luxury to simply pack up and leave — or the luxury to move in when the area started to gentrify.

Nevertheless, this was our situation, and many of us tried to make it better. Some residents started community soccer programs; others worked with incarcerated youth from the community. Most would simply mentor youth one-on-one. For us, this work was, and still is, necessary to our very survival. And, of course, people from the communities I grew up in worked to reduce the harm caused by overdoses and exposed needles by helping start supervised consumption sites.

Attempting to equate a needle on a front lawn to an increase in “disorder” does a disservice to those who grew up in the area and made efforts to address a public health issue that started long before supervised consumption sites opened.

Just simply looking at the evidence at hand should be enough for supervised consumption programs to be expanded to other parts of the city. Some may wonder why these services are not in newer neighbourhoods or in the suburbs. The answer is that our current city council lacks the will to stand up to the groups opposing this expansion. The tragic thing about all this is that the communities that need this help are the very ones that aggressively oppose their implementation.

Even though supervised consumption sites are successful, council is held hostage by a group of community organizations, business leaders and pundits that rely on old stereotypes of drug use and addiction in order to justify their inaction. The simple fact of the matter is that these groups have no evidence or moral footing to support their claims that supervised injection sites are harmful.

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Nevertheless, the influence of these stereotypes is powerful and has inhibited change before. For example, in 2013, the Terwillegar community — a well-off area with its own problems — opposed efforts to build social housing. They said it would cause “disorder” and some claimed it would decrease their property values. This same logic is often extended when supervised consumption sites are proposed in their neighbourhoods.

Now, the opposition to these sites and programs do not come from the communities I grew up in — we want those neighbourhoods to seek help — but instead they come from city hall and the community organizations that care more about their property values than human lives. This is where we should focus our frustration when we find needles on our lawns.

Acknowledging this is important as it helps create more meaningful discussion about this topic — and, by extension, communities like mine. Hopefully, it will encourage those in positions of power to take meaningful action instead of shifting the blame on the communities I grew up in, and the people trying to help.

Bashir Mohamed is an Edmonton-based writer.

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