Supervised Consumption Sites - Why We Need Them

Written by Katie Hedley

As we enter the month of September, our club has chosen to focus on recovery. Recovery is used as an umbrella term for numerous issues such as drug and addition, self harm, or even recovery from a traumatic event; your recovery is defined by you and only you. With the topic of recovery in mind, I’ve decided to talk about supervised consumption sites or safe injection sites, which seem to hold a highly controversial opinion. Although, after learning about the true motives and the execution of these sites, saving lives and our communities is a concept I fully support.

If you are unaware as to what a supervised consumption site is, it is a facility drug users can go to in order to consume and/or inject their illegal, and sometimes even legal, substances in a safe and sanitary matter. The idea of these sites are very controversial, in which I understand why. It seems counter-intuitive to allow drug users a safe place to consume these illegal substances rather than pointing them in the direction of recovery and rehabilitation. However, and I’m sure most of you reading this will know, in order for a drug user to achieve full rehabilitation and recovery, the commitment must come from the drug user themselves and until that occurs, giving drug users a safe consumption site where they are provided sterilized needles and supervision from health professionals is a beneficial idea for both the drug user themselves and our communities given that it saves lives.

Not only do these safe injection sites save individual lives, they also convey other benefits. Since drug users are given sterilized needles, there is a reduced risk of spreading HIV as well as unintentional overdose. These facilities also provide a sanitary disposal of drug paraphernalia which takes dirty needles and other contraband out of communities, especially away from children that may come across these tools.

The motives behind supervised consumption sites is not to prevent drug usage or rehabilitate drug users as that is a societal and public health issue that needs to be tackled on its own. However, these facilities are proven to be beneficial for not only individual lives, but also our communities and gives a temporary solution to a much larger issue.