First off, I'm sure you've heard a lot about this injection site thing. The word “safe” is a marketing thing. If I had a needle right now full of fentanyl, would anybody volunteer to let me stick it in their neck? I doubt it, because it's not a safe thing to put a needle full of fentanyl into your neck
On the word “supervise”, the idea I think came out of their issue—Dr. Wood, I'm sure, can speak to this—in the upper east side of Vancouver. Fair enough, it's a public health HIV and hepatitis C issue. It's not really an addiction issue, in my opinion. It's almost like a government smokescreen to say that if we do this, then we don't have to do a comprehensive program that would cost billions versus maybe half a million for the injection site.
My experience is this. If I had an opportunity to get better, why wouldn't I take it? This is one of the analogies I use. Let's say I'm a lifeguard and somebody is drowning. I finally get them out. I do CPR. They're alive again. Then I just throw them back in the water. Why would I do that? I've got them here now, so let's treat them, because it's a treatable illness.
The problem, I think, is that the door is closed everywhere. It's like this has become a quote-unquote treatment option when instead it's just an idea that homeless people could go to this place and I guess somebody would wake them up if they stopped breathing. The thing is that we have in Ottawa alone probably 3,000 to 4,000 people injecting at home every day, and they inject five to eight times a day. That's about 30,000 injections a day. You don't see everybody dying from it.
My main point with the treatment aspect is that if you're this woman who is homeless, who is hepatitis C positive, who hasn't eaten, who is just ravaged with illness, addiction, depression, and who has to wake every morning to turn a trick to get money, do you really think she wants to wake up in the morning? That is no life. That is a living hell. I have some pictures I could show you. If I showed you their faces, then you'd see that it is a living hell. They don't want to do this. If I gave them an option, if there were another door....
But there isn't another door. That's the problem. That's my whole point of telling you all this stuff. There isn't another door.
I opened that door because I saw a need. We had a thousand people within three years. We have had seven physicians within three years working flat-out, all day long, trying to keep people out of withdrawal. Our problem is that we don't have the next step. We don't have any funding for any kind of psychological help or any kind of treatment programs. There are just roadblocks and barriers everywhere.
It almost seems like there's this conspiracy not to treat addiction, but to say, listen, this is the answer; you can come into our little basement thing, inject, we'll give you a pamphlet, and bye-bye. That will be the answer for the treatment of addiction. I don't think, as Canadians, we believe that. I know a lot of really wonderful people who are supportive of a foundation I'm going to try to start, to privatize this, to develop our own centres. If the government's not going to do it, I think we're going to have to do it. I just can't stand here and watch these people die every day, and suffer.