Toronto residents, stakeholders open to safe drug injection site: study

[The Bear]

dope or not, you're not allowed to smoke anything on public transit so that is the immediate response.

As for smoking dope in front of the kids, NBD. IMO it's no different than having a beer or a shot of scotch....and certainly no worse than smoking a ciggie.......

As for Player and NIMBY, the problem is, no matter where you put it it will be in someone's backyard/neighbourhood.

Oshawa is a prime example. There is a methodone clinic downtown on (bank street I think?) and the local business association has taken the politicos to task for the problems it has created. PAYING customers are starting to avoid the local businesses due to the preponderance of undesireables hanging around, clogging up store door ways, trash everywhere, begging, etc. Do these businesses get a tax break because the politicians decided to put in a clinic that reduces their property value? Are the landlords giving the shopkeepers a discount on rent because of this? Nope. But they certainly will hammer the shopkeepers if they miss rent payments due to lack of sales....

My biggest beef with "do good" ideas like this is that often, the dregs of society are supported whereby the people who contribute to society are penalized. IMO that just isn't fair or right in any sense of the imagination. IMO the money being spent on something like this should be going to support single mothers who work 3 jobs, people who are leveraging every penny to open a store, business or ?......

Don't worry, I'm not just picking on addicts, I also think it is retarded to simply hand an UI cheque out to someone. I think what should happen is small businesses should (daily) submit a request to UI for help, and daily UI recipients should have to physically go to the office, be assigned a job for the day, go back to the office at the end of the day to collect their cheque. I was 100% behind the workfare program too but gasp, make people work for their benefits? Of course that program failed because you can't expect people to actually EARN........

 

[amz]

I'm with you on this one. I made the joke about Oshawa because I spend a lot of time there, and the downtown is already a train wreck. It saddens me to drive up Simcoe St. and see literally dozens of crackheads, meth users and street walkers who look an inch from death.

Why ANYONE would want to open up shop in DT Oshawa is beyond my comprehension.

 

[Farrah]

I worked on the condos just off bank and simcoe and we used to watch crack deals going down out in the open. 1 block from the cop shop. If buffalo is the armpit of the US, Oshawa is the armpit of Canada......

 

[Fun-sizedd!]

..didnt realize Oshawa was a bad place as I have never visited this part of town. All I know theres a huge GM factory there and Eric Lindros used to play for the OShawa Generals. ........However, I think East Vancouver (near Gas town) is the armpit of Canada.

 

[Yoda]

This part of town? Oshawa is a city unto itself dude...not a part of anything.........(well, it's a part of ontario which is a part of Canada but I think you get my drift).

 

[Pompal 09.]

Maybe if people got hugs before they injected? :neutral:

Couldn't hurt.

 

[JGV]

Could hurt the hugger, have you SEEN some of these people? Ewwwwww

I'll leave the hugging up to peace TYVM

 

[jean t]

lol tboy....

ps oshawa used to be a town .....

 

[Danny G]

This is just another case of good money after bad.
I had a guy who worked for me that as soon as you paid him he'd disappear for a drug and alcohol binge until the money was gone. I tried to help him out but in the end I just got sick and tired of having to call someone else in to help me. Being helpful only prolonged his miserable life. Last I saw him he was doing the meth scratch on a street corner.
I've seen heroin addicts in Paris - laying on the ground shaking and puking all over the place.
I feel no pity. Am I cruel? Maybe, however I expect that there is a percentage of society that will self destruct no matter whats done for them. Why prolong the agony? Give them a great big hit of whatever their poison is and be done with it.

 

[Wiett]

have you been to east vancouver? Its much worse than PARIs...uch:

 

[Monique]

SH: no, I don't think you're being cruel, though some bleeding hearts might. As I said, no one forced a needle into their arm, they made a conscious decision to do the drug so they have to pay the price.

 

[Barbara S]

I'm past even caring. I'm going to put in a proposal for one of those "Intervention" style reality shows called "Here, why not you just get it over with" where they just give the addict a huge load of shit and you get to watch him die.

 

[iTz moleman!]

That's what is commonly known as a "hot" shot...addicts are so used to the shit on the street that is little more than baby formula that given something pure, their bodies can't handle it.

Actually, addicts are a testiment to the durability of the human body. Think of the garbage that they inject into their veins, the lack of nutrition, the shitty living conditions, and they still keep on trucking.

 

[Aiden]

Yeah and when I think of all the good people who have died from cancer, ALS etc who never did anything to harm themselves in their life. it makes me sick to my stomach.

 

[Molly Smith]

and the good money spent on supporting the addicts that could be better spent supporting those who contribute to society.