Health experts bristle as Poilievre pledges drug consumption site restrictions

Ratcheting up the rhetoric amid a toxic drug crisis which has claimed the lives of thousands of people over the last decade, Federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says he would cancel federal funding for drug consumption sites.

He also says he’d shut down any sites where he claims they endanger the public – highlighting sites near schools or playgrounds.

“They’re drug dens,” Poilievre said during a news conference in Montreal on Friday, before repeating himself for emphasis. “They’re drug dens. And they’ve made everything worse. Everywhere they’ve been done they’ve made everything worse.”

But experts who’ve studied drug consumption sites like Insite in Vancouver dispute that claim.

“We used data from the B.C. coroner from about the three years before and the three years after the Insite facility opened,” said M-J Milloy, an assistant professor with the University of British Columbia’s Department of Medicine – pointing to research he conducted a number of years ago. “And in our study, we found that after the facility opened, there was a 35 per cent decrease in rates of fatal overdose around the facility compared to rates further away from the facility.”

And some warn there’s no quick fix to the overdose crisis more broadly, with Dr. Paxton Bach with the BC Centre on Substance Use saying the discussion shouldn’t be a debate about harm reduction in opposition to treatment – but should focus on the multifaceted nature of the challenge.

“The inflammatory language that’s being used is inaccurate and unhelpful and it distracts from a really important conversation around the role of harm reduction interventions as a part of a response to the overdose crisis,” Bach said during an interview with CTV News on Friday.

B.C. Premier David Eby also weighed in on Poilievre’s comments, underlining his own support for the facilities.

"Closing these sites would be a real mistake,” Eby said. “Both in terms of quality of life in the broader community, but also in terms of our efforts to keep people alive."

As for the federal government -- the Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions indicated there’s no plan to change course.

“Federal supervised consumption sites have reversed more than 55,000 overdoses since 2017,” a statement sent to CTV reads in part. “We need a full continuum of care so people can stay alive to make it to recovery which includes: prevention, enforcement, treatment and harm reduction.”

Poilievre’s comments come a day after Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry released a report calling for access to so-called safer supply drugs without a prescription – an approach Eby immediately dismissed as an option for his government.