April 18, 2026
Dr. Vincent Lam, Guest Contributor at thestar.com
Mental Health Counselling
Imagine the captain of a sinking boat saying to passengers, “Would you like a life jacket? Or a spot in a life raft?” Any sensible passenger would reply, “I will take both!”
Living with an untreated substance addiction is not unlike being aboard a boat that is taking on water. The boat, or the addiction, becomes heavier, less manoeuvreable, and is at risk of sinking all the way to the ocean floor. In my work as an addiction doctor, the greatest satisfaction is to see someone with an addiction board the life raft: getting treatment, significantly reducing or stopping their substance use, and paddling to dry land, a place of stability. Meanwhile, I see every day that many people who use drugs also need a life-jacket: harm reduction — which includes the provision of clean drug use supplies, public education around the use of naloxone to reverse overdoses, and supervised drug consumption sites. The crux of it is simple: someone who overdoses and dies never gets to treatment. What kind of captain would offer a choice between a life-jacket and a life raft? Yet, the Ford Conservative government is doing even worse. In deciding that it will defund all provincially funded supervised drug consumption sites with 90 days notice, effective June 13, it is saying, “There’s no life preserver. Get in the raft — and if you fall out and drown, tough!”
In 2024, despite well-established scientific evidence around the effectiveness of supervised consumption sites, the Ford Conservative government passed Bill 223, banning such sites within 200 m of schools or child-care centres. This resulted in closure of 15 sites across the province. Many chose to convert to the province’s abstinence-based model, the HART or ‘Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment’ Hub, in which the government is investing $550 million dollars. These are intended to be focused on treatment and recovery, and transitioning people into stable housing, and do not allow any on-site drug consumption. Kensington Market, a site which mounted a Charter challenge and won a court injunction to remain open, reported a 30 per cent increase in visitors mid-2025 after 4 sites closed in Toronto. In the past month, the Ford government has announced that it will defund eight remaining provincially funded supervised consumption sites, including two of the busiest sites in Toronto — the Moss Park and Fred Victor sites. This, despite a Toronto Public Health report urging the provincial government to increase access to supervised consumption sites to prevent overdoses, and warning that closures would reduce access to life-saving clinical services, resulting in “significant risk of increased overdose deaths.”
Read more at theStar.com
