The opening of supervised-consumption services in Victoria is a bittersweet win for the advocates who have fought long and hard for the dignity to use out of the isolating and dangerous shadows.
This win has been made on the graves of the people who have died preventable deaths — a result of a health authority too slow to react and the opinions of people like Les Leyne.
Leyne grudgingly buries an acknowledgment of the benefits of supervised-consumption services while extending a paternalistic and abstinence-based view of addiction that judges two young women who honestly and unabashedly discussed their substance use in a recent CBC interview. He goes on to widely miss the point of supervised-consumption services, perpetuating the stereotype that substance users are people who need protection from themselves.
Leyne appears to express disappointment in the fact that these two women are not in the stage of change that he morally requires them to be in before granting them services that should be considered a public-health norm. Leyne might be frustrated when “dealing with” people who use substances, like Loney and Elisabeth. I am equally frustrated by dealing with people like Leyne.
Lorna Mace
Oak Bay
