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constance_chlore said:
Again, I think this raises the question of who we want to replace the current council, because looking at the obvious set of competitors... I wouldn't say it looks promising. Do we really think that PACE would do a better job? The Tim Cartmell party? Because it sounds like what they want, PACE especially, is an end to densification (i.e. fewer 'eyes on the street') and disinvestment from public transit and active transportation. That all seems quite contrary to the goal of improving transit safety and reducing disorder.

There might be a few individual candidates who might take the 'right' line here. (Maybe Anand Pye in O'day-min will be one of them—we'll see.) But I would caution against a kneejerk anti-incumbent sentiment here because the alternatives really, truly can be worse.
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You could be right that alternative is worse, but at this point I feel the frustration with the incumbents is much greater than the fear of the alternatives.
 
David A said:
Yes, there are a lot of people in Edmonton who have been turned off using transit or even going downtown because of how poorly these problems have been handled, particularly over the last several years.

Recently, there was an older person who mentioned she was unhappy with the current parking changes downtown (ie. removal of the parking machines where you can pay using cash). When I suggested she could also take LRT to come to my office (which by the way is right next to an LRT station), she reacted as if I was wanting her to go to into a war zone.
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I took two long term residents of Edmonton on the lrt to go see a movie dt, I was shocked to learn a) they had never taken a bus/lrt b) didnt even know how to buy a ticket.
 
edm13 said:
So whether you decide to act depends on how out of it you can get? At the very least, don’t give the guy smoking a cigarette a ticket if you’re hardly willing to enforce the far more egregious acts happening on ETS
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Also was downtown for the game yesterday. Walked past Churchill square, there was an entire crack party going on. Probably 15 people just smoking up, not a care in the world. Not necessarily passed out either. This was at 7pm. Then, once we left the restaurant around 9pm, the same group was still there. In addition to them, lots of people on the bench facing 100 street doing drugs also. Where is any enforcement? There must of been a show at the citadel last night as I parked in the library and noticed lots of older well dressed people. Very poor experience for these people who might not make it downtown often.
 
It always seems as when DT is busier with events - the Degenerates show up in full force to put on a "show.," for those of us who are not degenerates. I have an idea, imagine a world where there is a group of civil service workers who carry guns and uphold our laws and fill our jails with said Degenerates? Jk, how about instead of OEG paying 40 cops to hang out and watch a free hockey game at Rogers - their boots are on the street doing what they are paid to do?
 
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trevorhayden said:
This is connected. A lot of people use drugs in public in busy places because we have no good safe consumption sites. If they overdose, they want good samaritans who will help them. We need more safe consumption sites.
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SCS harm people. We need recovery resources. They’ve been debunked at this point.

There’s nothing safe about heroin.

Let’s get people help and not waste resources on SCS. They’re just prolonged MAID services at this point.
 
trevorhayden said:
This is connected. A lot of people use drugs in public in busy places because we have no good safe consumption sites. If they overdose, they want good samaritans who will help them. We need more safe consumption sites.
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Canada needs tougher laws against consumption of Class A narcotics. Canada also needs judges and police to enforce the tougher laws. SCS and "Safe Supply" don't work - these types of naive and supposedly "progressive" policies have been a disaster.
 
Bro. You can't just say something is debunked and think it is so. That's not how science works.
 
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trevorhayden said:
Bro. You can just say something is debunked and think it is so. That's not how science works.
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Show me a city with a lower rate of death from drugs and improved social disorder after rolling out SCS.

Do they “prevent ODs and diseases spreading”?

Sure. Temporarily. But they don’t help people recover and have massive social implications on innocent residents nearby. They simply prolong the problems and at a huge expense to taxpayers. Giving people free heroin isn’t reducing harm, nor is it safe.

Where else can we supervise people struggling with addiction? Mental hospitals, recovery centres, prisons. Where they don’t perpetuate their cycles of addiction and crime and where they don’t hurt innocent people.
 
We've had this discussion so many times here. Main issue with focusing on a recovery-oriented approach without SCS is the fact that it ignores worsening drug level toxicity and the elephant in the room of relapse. Without a progressive movement towards narcotics that are "clean" without any xylazine, fentanyl and other toxic items that have been added to the drug supply, you're going to end up with people coming out of recovery and relapsing and overdosing and ending up dead due to low tolerance. SCS by itself isn't the sole solution, but without it and addressing the issue of a toxic drug supply, you're going to end up with street narcotics that are increasingly harmful towards users' brain chemistry that recovery becomes impossible or incredibly cost and time intensive after extended use.

Anyway, not sure if I'm the only one noticing but they're really upping the fare checks in both Valley and Capital/Metro line trains. It's weird seeing a large amount of enforcement so consistently but I know it helps with riders' perception.
 
trevorhayden said:
Bro. You can't just say something is debunked and think it is so. That's not how science works.
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It's repeatedly debunked and re-bunked. Research communities really do not have a good answer.

The general academic consensus is that harm reduction to addicts works, with mortality rates decreasing compared to areas with no SCS.

Some articles:
Impact of safe consumption facilities on individual and community outcomes: A scoping review of the past decade of research, Dow-Fleisner et. al
Supervised Injection Facilities as Harm Reduction: A Systematic Review, Levengood et. al,
The North American opioid crisis: how effective are supervised consumption sites?, Kennedy et. al,

The problem with a fair amount of these types of studies is that they do not factor in some qualitative information. For example, studies claim that there isn't a demonstrable change in the rates of criminality for areas near SCS. Police working in these areas would likely tell you that they don't bother reporting minor property crimes, vagrancy, etc. in these areas. Ultimately, it's subjective, not academic. Sort of like saying one political party or another is better.
 
Maybe put people in jail who consume narcotics in public, instead of giving $25 fines, or no fines as is the current policy. Problem solved. It's not hard, the solution is there, and it's easy.
 
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