Montreal City Weblog

Kate 09:15 on 2023-07-06 Permalink Reply  

• Robert H 10:39 on 2023-07-06 Permalink

  Wow. If I lived there, my nerves would be shot and I’d lose my mind with rage. I’m particularly struck by the following:

  “Des vendeurs de drogue ont même loué un condo dans un des immeubles. On y a trouvé des centaines de seringues.”

  When condo board member Alexandra Gonzalez says “On vit un enfer,” I believe her. Even when everyone has the best of intentions, there’s no hope for cöexistence with people in the grip of addiction when the public sector fails as much as it has here. I don’t know what the solution would be, but it would have to rest with the city and the province. I don’t want to be a cynic, but public officials seem to have opted for a policy of containment at the expense of les gens du coin. And I’m not referring only to the fed-up folks in the pricey condos, but the down and outers nodding off in doorways and alleys with needles on their arms.

• Joey 13:05 on 2023-07-06 Permalink

  Really strong reporting here – what’s perhaps most interesting is that none of the people interviewed are caricatures. So you get a protagonist – the condo unit owner – who is *not* a NIMBY, knee-jerk opponent to safe injection sites. You get a social worker who acknowledges that the presence of the safe injection site he runs has caused a rough neighbourhood to get rougher. The only people who come off as clueless/dishonest are the media reps for the city and the police, who make vague claims about concrete steps being taken when, clearly, public resources devoted to improving the situation are disappearing. And, as the thread on healthcare above makes clear, it’s not like these resources are being ‘overused’ elsewhere, with the possible exception of the ‘physicians who have opted out of the free public system’ category.

• Kate 16:31 on 2023-07-06 Permalink

  I agree. It’s a good report. You have to ask why the building security isn’t better, why our well paid cops aren’t more responsive, and – in the wider sense – why there aren’t more social services in the area.

  It must be an odd job knowingly telling lies for government.

• Joey 17:37 on 2023-07-06 Permalink

  Residences shouldn’t need security…

• Kate 18:16 on 2023-07-06 Permalink

  They shouldn’t but evidently they do, at least in some parts of town.

• Michael 09:39 on 2023-07-07 Permalink

  Enough is enough, we need to close these injection sites down. There is no benefit to the community for this.

• Kate 10:21 on 2023-07-07 Permalink

  Can you cite studies, Michael?

• Tim 10:50 on 2023-07-07 Permalink

  It’s not a study, but the following article is a damning indictment of safe supply where addicts can pick up drugs and go: https://nationalpost.com/feature/how-the-liberal-governments-safer-supply-is-fuelling-a-new-opioid-crisis

• Josh 11:26 on 2023-07-07 Permalink

  Not a lot of specifics, nor people willing to be quoted on the record in that piece, Tim. There was a good takedown of that piece specifically on the Canadaland podcast some weeks ago.
  https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/885-poilievre-on-drugs/

• Tim 15:29 on 2023-07-07 Permalink

  I listened to the podcast Josh. One of the first statements was an acknowledgement that diversion exists. They did cast doubts on the doctors who did not go on record and I’ll agree with them that the article was hyperbolic on the current impact as of today. I really did not follow their logic when they advocated more agency for addicts while at the same time dismissing how hydromorphone street price estimates were obtained by doctors from the addicts that they treated. The host also seemed laser focused on whether this was causing more deaths as opposed to whether it was causing more addicts because people who were too scared to try fentanyl would be more open to govt approved hydromorphone.

  There is a need for more data to qualify and scope the positives and negatives of diversion. Reading through https://www.nss-aps.ca/sites/default/files/resources/ReframingDiversionForHealthCareProviders.pdf, I get the impression that this organization has already made up its mind.