CTS works, now it’s time for next step

Four months after a controversial clinic opened downtown to help drug abusers inject safely, and offer treatment and counselling, the initial verdict on its performance is in.

Supervised consumption works.

A report on what has been happening at the consumption and treatment services (CTS) site at Simcoe and Aylmer streets details both the number of people using the service and the effect on activity in the downtown area.

By the numbers, 149 people are registered with the site. From July to August, monthly visits nearly doubled to 944.

Also important for the site’s long-term success is the positive effect it has had on the downtown area.

Terry Guiel, executive director of the Downtown Business Improvement Area, confirms in the report that fewer people are using drugs openly downtown and he doesn’t see as many discarded needles lying around.

One Charlotte Street business reports “a huge reduction” in the number of needles staff pick up in their back parking lot — fewer than 10 since June.

Guiel, in his role as DBIA spokesperson, had been critical of the provincial government’s decision to fund the downtown site back in March. He was speaking for many downtown business owners and investors who believed it would draw more drug addicts and homeless people to the area, increase needle litter, and scare shoppers and entertainment district patrons away.

However, evidence from other cities where supervised consumption and treatment has been available for years indicated those fears were wrong. Now the local evidence has backed that up.

Fourcast, the drug counselling agency that operates the site and worked hard to make it a reality, deserves credit. As do its partner agencies, PARN (Peterborough AIDS Resource Network), 360 Degree Nurse Practitioner-Led Clinic, and the local public health unit and paramedic service.

The provincial government, slow as it was to answer a compelling need here, also gets credit for committing $1 million annually to allow those agencies to operate the site.

One more number from the report is both good news and a head-shaker: nine people have overdosed at the site but none died. They were saved because professional medical staff were there to respond immediately. They came close to dying because they were using tainted drugs bought on the street.

Where is the logic in that? More than $1 million a year and an impressive array of medical and counselling expertise is invested in a modern facility that can help marginalized people inject dirty drugs as safely as possible, but isn’t allowed to supply them with safe drugs.

There is no logic, only misplaced fear that giving people drugs will create more addicts. Like the concern that a supervised consumption site would make the situation worse, not better, evidence proves that’s not the case.

Imagine the numbers from Peterborough’s CTS site looked like this: homelessness among participants reduced by 35 per cent, survival sex work by female participants reduced by two-thirds, criminal activity to pay for drugs reduced by 75 per cent.

That’s the documented effect of a four-year long program in London, Ont., that supplies long-term addicts with medical grade hydromorphone, an opioid sold commercially as Dilaudid.

The next step in treating the Peterborough opioid crisis it to move from supervised consumption to safe supply, which requires federal and provincial approval. It needs to be taken quickly, for everyone’s sake.

There is no logic, only misplaced fear that giving people drugs will create more addicts. Like the concern that a supervised consumption site would make the situation worse, not better, evidence proves that’s not the case