Did they not initially choose the sites near where there were the most problems. Like they said, if there are users doing it around the school, would you want to build a site there and have it contained, or build a site 2km away that doesnt reduce users near the school as much?
The difference between 200m and 2km is 10x. 200m feels very close, closer than many places will even place their bus stops to each other. Something along the lines of 500m-1km away from schools seems more reasonable IMO.
Drug users loiter and use drugs where they can get away with it. With proper resources provided elsewhere many will go there instead of shooting up in the school yard, the ones that linger and become problematic can be relocated to treatment sites by law enforcement and site staff.
I think you might be underestimating how large a distance 200m exclusion covers. It effectively makes it impossible to build these sites anywhere in the suburbs. One of these sites in an industrial complex is kinda useless. Consider that a school’s grounds can be quite large, maybe 200m^2, which means that the exclusion zone is actually more like 600m^2 around the center of the school (anyone who has played a grid based ttrpg with different sized creatures is familiar with this idea). In Ontario we can have up to 8 schools per community (french&English, primary&secondary, catholic&public) and remember this applies to more places than just schools. The type of place that makes a good school and a good safe injection site are also quite similar (cheap land, high population density, access to public transit and major roads etc)
Also keep in mind that the process to get these drug sites is already very involved, you can’t just plop them down. Existing rules requires a lengthy public appeal process, a process that takes into account proximity to schools. But unlike ham fisted rules like these it can take into account the specific realities of that site through a democratic process. For instance, if you have to cross a highway and a fenced private property to reach the school then they aren’t going to interact much even if they fit within some arbitrary circle.
I live next to a safe drug site (that will have to close over this, its 195m away) . I can say very definitively that this community is far safer with this site then without. It greatly reduces the number of high people on the streets and the number of needles on the ground. Most importantly far less ambulances.
Did they not initially choose the sites near where there were the most problems. Like they said, if there are users doing it around the school, would you want to build a site there and have it contained, or build a site 2km away that doesnt reduce users near the school as much?
The difference between 200m and 2km is 10x. 200m feels very close, closer than many places will even place their bus stops to each other. Something along the lines of 500m-1km away from schools seems more reasonable IMO.
Drug users loiter and use drugs where they can get away with it. With proper resources provided elsewhere many will go there instead of shooting up in the school yard, the ones that linger and become problematic can be relocated to treatment sites by law enforcement and site staff.
You’re contradicting yourself and you are clearly not speaking from an informed point of view.
I think you might be underestimating how large a distance 200m exclusion covers. It effectively makes it impossible to build these sites anywhere in the suburbs. One of these sites in an industrial complex is kinda useless. Consider that a school’s grounds can be quite large, maybe 200m^2, which means that the exclusion zone is actually more like 600m^2 around the center of the school (anyone who has played a grid based ttrpg with different sized creatures is familiar with this idea). In Ontario we can have up to 8 schools per community (french&English, primary&secondary, catholic&public) and remember this applies to more places than just schools. The type of place that makes a good school and a good safe injection site are also quite similar (cheap land, high population density, access to public transit and major roads etc)
Also keep in mind that the process to get these drug sites is already very involved, you can’t just plop them down. Existing rules requires a lengthy public appeal process, a process that takes into account proximity to schools. But unlike ham fisted rules like these it can take into account the specific realities of that site through a democratic process. For instance, if you have to cross a highway and a fenced private property to reach the school then they aren’t going to interact much even if they fit within some arbitrary circle.
I live next to a safe drug site (that will have to close over this, its 195m away) . I can say very definitively that this community is far safer with this site then without. It greatly reduces the number of high people on the streets and the number of needles on the ground. Most importantly far less ambulances.