Yes, I do. It's unfortunate, because substance use disorders, as you've alluded to, transcend political ideology and partisanship. The patients don't ask me what my political affiliation is before they let me examine them on the street. I don't ask them.
It very definitely has become a political issue. Can I share why I think it's become more of a political issue? It's because you are now seeing more people on the street using drugs, whereas before they were in safe consumption sites. That's because the way drugs are used, the availability of drugs and the types of drugs that are available mean that they can no longer take one injection of heroin, get on with their day, get a health card, find a house and get money from the bank like the rest of us do on a day-to-day basis. They now have to spend all their time doing that every hour, and because of that, it's become a visible problem.
That's the issue. That's what is driving politicians to make it a political issue. Just as you very clearly said, I've yet to hear a politician come down to the ICU and tell me how to manage a critically ill patient, yet all politicians, from a variety of different partisanships, have no issue telling me how to do my job at the corner of Murray Street and King Edward Avenue. It's visible. The reason it's visible is that the types of drugs people use have fundamentally changed. They are so rapid-onset and short-acting that patients have to get the next hit.
Let me explain it to you in a very quick way. Patients who inject drugs or smoke drugs, however they choose to do it, know that what they bought on the street they have no idea about. They have no idea, really, what they bought on the street. They may have bought fentanyl, or at least have been told that there's fentanyl in there. You heard from the other physician that there are a lot of contaminants. They know that when they smoke or inject that drug, they may very well die. However, they've experienced withdrawal, and withdrawal for them is a fate worse than death. Basically, they're taking a handgun with a single bullet and spinning the chamber. They're doing whatever they need to do to avoid withdrawal. They would rather die than go through withdrawal.
That is part of the problem. That's how potent and sinister the drugs on the street are. Therefore, one single approach will not solve this problem for us. It just can't.