Juno News - The Trudeau government is an opioid dealer

00:00:00.000 there's been a lot in the news so you may not have heard the latest on the safe injection sites

00:00:10.400 front now a lot of people don't care for these facilities where people can go and they can

00:00:15.040 inject their drugs do their drugs under the supervision of a nurse if they run into trouble

00:00:19.440 you can call an ambulance and you can bring help to these people in the hopes that they don't

00:00:22.960 overdose in the hopes that they don't die i don't think anybody wants to see these people perish

00:00:27.680 but a lot of people have concerns about these sites as enabling facilities i share a lot of

00:00:32.480 those concerns well you would think if they were going to up the ante and do something even more

00:00:37.280 radical you'd hear about it in advance right we we'd have a national conversation about it like how

00:00:42.880 well now they're talking about expanding a medically assisted dying assisted suicide

00:00:47.200 and there's going to be a national conversation about it we kind of try and strike a balance we

00:00:52.000 get a lot of voices involved not so with the safe injection site activism it's stuff that just

00:00:57.120 kind of happens and here's the latest thing that's happened the federal government is giving out

00:01:02.080 free opioids yes you heard that right the government is giving out drugs that these people would otherwise

00:01:08.960 be getting on the street from dealers the the government is now their dealer and well you are

00:01:15.440 the one paying for it through your tax dollars how do you feel about that now the argument is that

00:01:20.240 a lot of these street drugs you can't trust them they put really sketchy things in there

00:01:24.480 there's fentanyl then there's this crazy thing called car fentanyl where you know if you take

00:01:28.880 one dose of it you can die from that single dose there's awful stuff going on and i certainly want

00:01:33.840 to see this end i want to see the carnage on the streets go away and i want to see these people's lives

00:01:38.320 improve but do you support the government being a dealer and even if you're open to the conversation

00:01:44.080 how do you feel about the fact that this is just kind of happened and that's what's been going on

00:01:49.280 with the safe injection sites and now the free drugs free opioids for well really anybody who

00:01:54.400 shows up and raises their hand to want them this should be more of a conversation politicians should

00:02:01.040 be involved stakeholders should be involved but what a lot of these harm reduction activists and

00:02:06.480 and i think activist is the right term they're certainly not medical professionals i was speaking

00:02:12.480 to one doctor about how people call the people who attend

00:02:15.280 the safe injection sites they're clients and doctors go we never call people who go to our

00:02:20.560 clinics our facilities we never call them clients they are our patients because we are trying to help

00:02:26.800 them we are trying to get them better and they do not actually dictate the terms of their treatment

00:02:31.680 we the medical professionals the experts we do in this safe injection site places in harm reduction

00:02:37.920 they call them clients and they also say they have a no judgment policy we meet them where they're at

00:02:42.800 such that well they're really not inclined to push these people uh towards getting off the drugs into

00:02:48.560 rehabilitation programs i guess if the people come and say i would like to know about these programs

00:02:52.880 yeah they'll help them get there but they certainly don't prod and encourage people to get there they

00:02:57.120 say it doesn't work but uh i'm not so sure about that and and would the canadian taxpayers and would the

00:03:03.520 public feel a lot better to know that more was being done to help these people actually get off drugs

00:03:10.320 i think they would and i think it's a conversation that we need to have more but the government is

00:03:17.120 not having that conversation they're simply announcing here's the money it hardly goes reported it hardly

00:03:22.560 goes discussed and that's too bad because i think the opioid crisis does matter but i think we have to

00:03:27.840 to start speaking about it more broadly in society

Juno News - August 21, 2020