• saigot@lemmy.ca
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    2 months ago

    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.