Quebec May Open Safe Injection Sites A L’Insite And Compassion Club

It would be about time and why shouldn’t we? We are, after all, a province of progress or supposed to be. After all, we opened the first Compassion club, a place, highly supervised, where sick people with the prescription from a medical professional can obtain medicinal marijuana, albeit, on the fringes of the law.  We also have a needle exchange site in Downtown Montreal right on Ste-Catherine E. and Sanguinet St where addicts can exchange their used needles and receive clean ones. The Cactus Needle Exchange is likely where one of the safe injection sites would be located, as they had planned last year on opening one, with or without the province’s blessing last year.

In 2008, then health minister, Philippe Couillard was interested in opening a safe injection site, but he ended up resigning and Yves Bolduc took over the portfolio and scrapped the idea.  Now, in light of the latest Supreme Court decision, it appears that Dr. Bolduc may change his tune (warning; link may have pay wall as the Montreal Gazette now wants folks to pay if you’ve viewed their pages 30 times in 30 days).

The minister noted he has asked his department’s legal advisers to assess the implications of the Supreme Court decision. “I’m going to wait for that because I want to take a good decision, it’s an important decision.” He said his position will be made public “in the next few days.”

Personally, I’d be surprised if Dr. Bolduc didn’t allow it.  While Dr. Bolduc, hisself, may be ideologically against such sites, he does have the facts and the data supporting the presence of such sites in front of him. If he has read the judgement not once but twice as he says he has, then he knows this. Plus, as a doctor, he must make this decision based on science and not ideology. I don’t see very much opposition from the opposition parties on. Don’t forget, the ADQ under Gerard Deltell these days are fiscally conservative, not socially. Besides, they’re aren’t that many of them. C’mon Doc, unlike Leona Agluquack, who doesn’t even appear to have a university diploma, you should know better, do the right thing.

Also, there have activists in Montreal demanding a safe injection site here like Insite. Remember, we Quebecers aren’t that compliant and are quite vocal, unlike the rest of the country. It looks like their work may pay off in the end.

Another site that may be opened would be in Quebec City’s St-Roch district, but that may be problematic as it is being, ahem! Gentrified, these days. Yep, nothing like yuppifying a neighbourhood to get all the NIMBYs out in full force. Plus, let’s remember that Quebec City ain’t as progressive as Montreal is. However, this doesn’t take away from the fact that there is just as much of a need in Quebec City as there is in Montreal–they too have their share of misery and with that come the by-products, like drug addiction.

Oh, and  for anyone who wants their morning yuk-yuks, Babs Kay has predictably dove straight for her fainting couch. Here is the bonus track.

As for the Compassion Club that I mentioned above, unfortunately, most of their services have been shut down since last year due to the fact that many of their employees have been busted for trafficking last year.  Trial date has not been set as of yet.  Given Stevie Spiteful’s latest dumb on crime omnibus bill soon to be passed, because the opposition parties are shying away from it at Question Period, after all, they can’t be seen as being soft on pedophiles, now, the good folks of the Compassion club may have a harder time. Even if their case ends up before the Supreme Court, by that time, Stevie Spiteful may well have had a chance to stuff it with his ideological socially conservative friends.  Yes, boys ‘n’ girls, if one actually stopped listening to Harpercon spin and actually read the bill as well as the individual bills that went into that piece of monstrosity, you would find that pot growers would actually have higher minimum sentences than pedophiles. Here’s a link to an article about this.  Who’s soft on pedophiles now?  Anyway, please stop by the Compassion Club’s site to be informed as to their legal situation.

And to all you NIMBYs out there all whining about not wanting safe injection sites around; let me ask you this: Would you rather these drug addicts shoot their drugs and discard their used, dirty, contaminated needles in your child’s schoolyard or the park in which they play or perhaps even dump it in your backyard in passing? To me it’s a no brainer.  It should be to you too.